Your digital footprint: what can strangers see? | Cyber Smart Week 2026

Every good secret agent knows that even the smallest clues can reveal valuable information.
 
You might have shared your job title on LinkedIn, your running club in a newsletter, or your upcoming holiday plans in a public social media post. Each detail seems harmless on its own, but in the wrong hands, they can become valuable intelligence. Cyber criminals can piece these clues together to create convincing scam messages about your running club or upcoming trip.
 
That's your digital footprint – the trail of information about you online, including things other people publish.

Go undercover

It's time to do a little detective work, agent. Find out what information about you is available online, and what cyber criminals might be able to uncover.

• Search for yourself: Google your name using quotation marks, like this: "Firstname Lastname". This helps narrow the results to your full name. If there are too many results, add your town or job, or try searching for an old public username.
• Investigate the evidence: Just because a result matches your name doesn't mean it's about you. Check the actual webpage rather than relying on the search result preview.
• Check your cover: Visit one of your social media profiles and check what the public can see, using the instructions on the platform's help page. Remember, your signed-in view may show you more than a stranger can see.
• Schedule your next surveillance mission: Set a calendar reminder to repeat these steps every few months. Keep an eye on what information about you is publicly available and whether anything new has appeared.

Choose the audience

Not all intel is for public eyes.
 
Remove contact or personal details from your online accounts that don't need to be public, like your date of birth or phone number. Check your privacy settings and review old posts. You might want to keep family updates within your inner circle while sharing professional updates publicly.
 
A photo can reveal more than you realise. An address on a parcel label, a location tag or something in the background could give away valuable information. Before posting, inspect your photos for details you'd rather keep private.
 
If you spot something you'd like to change, make the updates on your personal phone or laptop. Avoid saving personal login details on work or shared computers.

Start at the source

Spotted some information about yourself online that shouldn't be there? Time for a little damage control, agent.
 
If information about you appears on someone else's website and doesn't look right, you can contact the website owner and ask them to remove unnecessary details or correct any mistakes.
 
Under the New Zealand Privacy Act, you can ask organisations to correct personal information that is wrong, incomplete or misleading, although this doesn't guarantee the change will be made, or give you a general right to have information deleted.
 
Google also considers requests to remove eligible personal information from its search results. Keep in mind that removing a search result is like taking down a signpost: the original webpage can still be there. People may reach it another way, and copies may remain.
 
Removing your information from Google.

Set up surveillance

Every good secret agent needs an early warning system. Here's how to set up yours.
 
Google Alerts is a free tool that can keep an eye out for new mentions of you online. It's quick and easy to set up, with no paid services or new software required.
 
Simply create an 'alert' for your name or other personal information, and Google can email you when it finds new matching results.
 
Google Alerts can't monitor every website or private profile, so just because you haven't received an alert doesn't mean there's nothing out there.
 
Set up Google Alerts.

Today’s five-minute action

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find one piece of publicly available information about yourself and decide what to do with it. It could be a social media profile, a sports record or a listing in a directory - anything that's available publicly.
 
Decide whether you're happy for that information to stay public, whether you want to limit who can see it, or whether you'd like to request a change.
 
If you're using a personal device, remove one unnecessary public detail if you can - or make a note to change it at home later.
 
Keep what you've found private and set a reminder to check whether any requested changes have been made. One small change can help reduce your digital footprint and keep your personal information out of the wrong hands.