CoverMe App Explains How to Remove Personal Phone Number from the Internet

CoverMe App Explains How to Remove Personal Phone Number from the Internet

San Jose, CA : None of us willingly share our personal information with strangers, but almost everything we do online involves providing detailed information about ourselves to others. And these are meticulously recorded by companies, sold, and then repurposed by advertisers, spam companies, and even malicious third parties.

Researchers from CoverMe, an encrypted messenging app, analyze and share how to remove personal details from the web and stay safe in the future.

Step 1: Remove Phone Numbers from Websites Where You Register with Them
First step should be to make a quick list of all the social media sites which ask you to provide a mobile phone number when you sign up. Most of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have options to remove your personal details or at least make them not publicly visible. Facebook in particular has now made it much easier to see what information is stored about you on its servers.

Step 2: Close Old or Unused Accounts
Plenty of older websites may no longer be widely used, but their data banks are full of millions of old users’ personal data. Make sure you close down all of these accounts and request that your data be deleted.

Step 3: Find Your Number Using Google
Once you’ve been through all the obvious candidates who might be storing your mobile phone number online, like Facebook, the next thing to do is a quick Google search.

Step 4: Remove Phone Numbers from Data Collection Sites
As you may already be aware, there are a host of companies that exist solely to collect and resell your data. That means you won’t necessarily find your information listed publicly on Google.These data brokers frequently scrape personal information from public records – both physical and digital – and compile it all into a private database which they then sell access to.

Step 5: Forbid Apps from Collecting Your Mobile Phone Number
Whenever you download and install an app, it will ask to be granted access to certain features on your mobile phone. Most of the time these are necessary for the app to function.

However, a lot of the time an app will ask for access to data that it doesn’t need for operational purposes. Instead, it will just collect that data and either sell it or use it to advertise products to you.

Fortunately, if you go into your phone settings you can easily adjust what type of data and functions that each app is given permission for.

Step 6: Learn How to Hide Your Mobile Phone Number Online
Of course, the best way to keep your personal details and mobile number from being shared online is to avoid it being visible or giving it away in the first place.

For example, with CoverMe’s encrypted messaging and calling service, you can communicate with people in total anonymity without ever having to give out your personal details. And you can use the disposable numbers that CoverMe provides to call regular numbers in the US, Canada, and China, even if the other person doesn’t have the CoverMe app.

“The good news is that you can better protect all your personal information from misuse,” says Alex Qiu, privacy expert at CoverMe. “The most important is to be aware of risks and start to make sure you stay safe online by preventing your mobile phone number from being shared.”