Even if you're not online often and are cautious about your personal information, there's a good chance you have a digital footprint that exposes your data. At best, nefarious actors can use this data to bombard your phone and email with spam. At worst, they can use it to scam you and steal money.

Also: 9 ways to delete yourself from the internet

That's why it's important to keep an eye on how much of your information has been exposed online. Anew, free tool from ExpressVPN lets you do just that.

How to use ExpressVPN's data removal tool

To use the tool, you'll enter your first and last name, age, city, and state. ExpressVPN will check 68 different data broker sites to see what information of yours is listed on these sites -- including your name, location, relatives, phone number, and email address.

Also: When you should use a VPN - and when you shouldn't

When I searched for my legal name, the one I never use to sign up for online services, the tool only returned one result. My location and phone number were there, but blurred (so you can't use this as a tool tofindsomeone's information). The list showed several close relatives as well.

Searching for the name I use online, though, returned dozens of results.

Pay to remove data - but there are free options

ExpressVPN's site does offer a paid subscription to remove your information, but there are ways to remove your data without paying.

First, every single data broker site offers a link to request that the site take down your data. These links aren't exactly easy to find, but they exist on each one -- usually something like, "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" or "Remove My Personal Information." I've found these sites to be responsive when you make this request.

Also: The best data removal services

Second, you can take advantage of Google's tool that lets you remove your personal data from search. This is a bit of a roundabout way and will only remove it from Google search (not the actual site where it's listed), but it will make your info more difficult to find. I was able to do this by taking the ExpressVPN list and searching for the data broker name and my name in the same query, then requesting removal of that result.

Lastly, there are several data removal tools that do the work of requesting data takedowns from each individual site for you. These tools range in price but usually cost about$8 a month and cover more than 500 data broker sites.

Security

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• How AI agents help hackers steal your confidential data - and what to do about it
• This new tool lets you see how much of your data is exposed online - and it's free
• How a researcher with no malware-coding skills tricked AI into creating Chrome infostealers
• That weird CAPTCHA could be a malware trap - here's how to protect yourself