What does the internet know about you? How to check in 20 minutes

Much of what a stranger can learn about you online was posted by you or your friends, spread across accounts made years apart. One detail rarely gives much away. Put a city named on one profile next to the view from your window in a photo on another, and they can narrow down where you live.

You can check what's out there in about twenty minutes by searching for yourself the way a stranger would. Use a private browser window, so being signed in doesn't change the results, and keep a note of anything you want to fix.

Search your name

Search your full name in quotes, then again with your city, college or employer added. Look through the first two pages of results and the Images tab. Then repeat the searches on a second search engine, like Bing or DuckDuckGo, since each one finds different pages. With a common name, most results will be other people, so note the ones that are you.

Search your usernames

List every username you've used, including old ones from school or games, and search each one in quotes. A reused username links accounts together: if your gaming name also appears on a profile with your real name, anyone can connect the two.

Search your photos

Put your profile pictures through a reverse image search, such as Google Lens or Bing Visual Search. The same photo on two accounts links them as surely as a shared username.

Then look at your public photos for clues to where you live or study: a house number, a school uniform, a car's number plate, a street sign or the view from a window.

Photos taken on a phone usually record where they were taken. Most social apps remove that location when you upload, but a photo shared as a file, or sent as a document in a chat app, often keeps it.

Search your email addresses and phone numbers

Search each email address and phone number you use, in quotes. They turn up in old forum posts, CVs, college lists and business listings.

In India, caller ID apps can show your name to anyone who has your number. Truecaller lets you take your number out of its search on its unlisting page.

Check for data breaches

Enter each email address at Have I Been Pwned to see which known data breaches included it. If an account in a breach shared its password with other accounts, change that password everywhere you used it. Start with your main email account, since it can reset the passwords of all the others, and turn on two-step verification there.

Read your old posts as a stranger would

Scroll back through your public posts, and the ones you're tagged in, looking for:

Where you live, work or study, even roughly.
When you're away, like check-ins and holiday photos posted while you're still there.
Your routine, such as the same gym or café at the same time every week.
Answers to common security questions: your first school, your pet's name, your mother's maiden name.

What to fix first

Start with the changes that prevent the most harm:

Change any reused password that appeared in a breach, and turn on two-step verification for your email.
Hide your phone number, email address and home address wherever they're public.
Give accounts you want kept apart different usernames and photos, and remove the links between them.
Delete accounts you no longer use. Searching your inbox for "welcome" or "verify your email" turns up ones you've forgotten.
Archive or delete posts that show where you live or when you're away.

For pages on other people's sites, ask the site to take the page down. In some countries, Google's Results about you tool can also remove search results that show your phone number, email address or home address.

Check your habits with a quiz

The OSINT Self-Assessment Quiz covers the same ground in about five minutes, with questions about your own habits instead of searches. Its report shows where your answers combine into a bigger risk, such as a reused username plus a linked profile, and suggests what to change first. It doesn't search for you or ask for your name or usernames, and your answers stay in your browser tab.