I am a Ghost... Not really.

I'm just an average guy that lives in the US. Not some secret spy, and I don't work in some three letter agency out of Langly. I am very well aware that I am not anonymous. I have rewards accounts and I've haven't been too concerned with what "they" know or not. But privacy and security are the kinds of things that once your interest is sparked, and you begin to learn, a balance has to be struck between being known and safeguarding what you don't want data brokers to know.

I figure that if the US Government wanted to know about me, they'd have everything they need to find me through my regular and usual habits. Obviously, I'm not changing any of that since I don't have any reason to. I'm not switching jobs, and if I did, it's not something that could easily be hidden because taxes are a thing.

So I've decided that I am more concerned about the average person who might want to look me up. A curious aquaintence. A manager. Perhaps a stalker girl I met at a bar a week or two ago.

I don't need to evade men in black suits, and I figure that data brokers have about what they can get from me too.

There are two things that I can control without having to change major things about my life:

1. I can control the data on the web. It is possible to get most of the data removed from places that another average citizen might try and find information on you. People search sites, social media, Google and other places. I have found that it's pretty simple, but the hard part is in the perseverance. Remembering to log all the sites you asked for removals. Logging all the URLs where you showed up. Coming back days or weeks later to verify that your information is removed. That all takes time and energy (an a high level of attention to details).

2. I can limit the data that I am bleeding out as well. While the information that is out there would be very hard, if not impossible to erase, I realized that I can start limiting the amount of information I am inadvertantly sharing now. I realize that as long as I am carrying my phone, it's going to be reporting back to Google and other apps. Unless I take more extreme measures, It will be insanely hard to hide from "big brother".

In this case, we're just talking in terms of shaking off a web-stalker or someone that is just a little too curious about you, The first rule of thumb is to not post anything revealing on social media. Better yet, don't have social media on your devices at all. Best yet, close down your accounts. In my situation, I have to have a couple for work. While I closed down my personal accounts, I also have accounts under a work email that stay tied to just work and clients. Even though I can be found there, I never post.

The second thing was to do Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo searches. I went through all the results that I showed up in for my name, street address, phone number, and image (face) matches. This took a lot of time. It also took a lot of work. Not all the sites were easy to get delisted from. A couple blogs never responded, but I was able to get Google and DuckDuckGo (didn't show up in Bing) to remove the result when I produced the emails that I'd sent.

I now use N8N, ollama and dolphin uncensored to automatically do searches for me every month. and it puts all new results into a spreadsheet for me.