Despite the greater amount of opportunities and convenience that the Internet provides us, we also find ourselves vulnerable in the event that we fall victim to an Internet scams. We also prefer not to have our private lives known to corporations. Despite this, as soon as you surf the Internet, your browser session’s information and preferences are sold to advertisers. To handle this concern about our privacy and malicious persons or websites using our information, the EU has enacted the General Regulation (the GDPR) to protect users from abuse and danger, which has prohibited the sharing of personal information and set a strict definition of what personal information actually is.

What Constitutes Personal Data GDPR Defined

GDPR Personal data are information indicative of an identifiable living person. Any pieces of data that can be combined to lead to identifying a specific individual are considered personal data. Encrypted data and also pseudonyms fall under that category as well. In the event, however, that data are transferred anonymously in a way that they cannot possibly be used to identify that person, these are not personal data. No matter what the technology is that is used to transfer this information and whatever way the data are stored, they are allowed for use as long as they cannot be used to identify a particular person.

For this reason, Google data and personalization based on your session searches are  commonly used to determine what ads to show you, however, this is not constitute a personal data breach, nor does Google actually issue information that could cause any harm or inconveniences to you personally. This law, as well as similar laws, dictates that when a mobile game app wishes to use your personal information and media, it must first make a personal data request. This is because this is a source of personal data that tells people what your identity is.

How to Remove Personal Data from Internet

You may be wondering right now, “I’d like to remove my personal information from public data sources. How do I do that?” While you cannot completely remove your personal data off of the Internet, there is a range of actions you can take to reduce your online presence and minimize others outfits’ ability to profit off of your information, which meanwhile don’t provide you anything in return. These actions include options like opting out of people search websites, deleting accounts you don’t use anymore or switching them from “public” to “private”, and removing your personal data on Google.