There are 5 primary concerns:

Phishing Attacks – Hackers can impersonate your friends, family or a trusted business and trick you or them into giving up sensitive information such as logins where the attacker can steal money from you.

Spam – We all know this one. Without regulations restricting how companies can use, share, or sell our personal data, we would be inundated with an unmanageable amount of unwanted marketing spam in the form of phone calls, texts, emails, and direct mail.

Scams – The more of our data is out there, the easier it is for scam artists to trick us or our family members into falling for scams that result in loss of money or other sensitive information. Privacy regulations help prevent our data from being recklessly shared in ways that result in it ending up in the hands of scammers.

Hacking – Hackers can gain access to our personal accounts and wreak havoc on our lives from stealing money, to hijacking our social media or email accounts to distribute malware and viruses. The fewer databases your personal data is in, the less likely you will be the target of this type of hacking.

Identity Theft – With our personal information, thieves can steal our identity and use it to take out credit cards in our name, buy thousands of dollars worth of things, and then leave us to foot the bill. The fewer databases your personal data is in, the less likely you will be the target of this type of theft.

Recommendation: Keep your digital footprint small. Delete your data from companies that no longer need it and stay out of data broker databases. This reduces your risk of being targeted.

PrivacyHawk has a free inbox scan feature that can help you easily identify which companies and apps are likely to be using your private information. You can use PrivacyHawk to make delete requests to any apps that no longer need your data.

PrivacyHawk also automates data broker removal for you so you don’t have to spend weeks trying to do it yourself. And it continually monitors for new risks and automatically squashes them as soon as they are found.