This guide is in development. The steps below are sound, and the verified full release, checked line by line against current settings the way the removal guide was, ships here when ready.
How findable are you? A self-audit.
Ninety minutes and a private browser window, ending in an honest answer to the question most people never ask.
Before deciding what to fix, find out what is actually exposed. This audit runs the same first pass an investigator or a curious stranger would run on you, a stalker too, in about ninety minutes, for free. You will finish with a scored map of your exposure across the seven threads of the web and a fix-first order. Audit only yourself, or family members who have asked you to.
Work in a private browsing window so your logged-in accounts do not color the results. Record findings in a simple sheet as you go: what turned up and where, and how fast it surfaced. Speed matters, because it is the difference between a determined adversary and any bored stranger.
The search engine pass
Start where every hunt starts.
The people-search pass
Now the storefronts.
The public record pass
Government sources tie names to places with official weight.
The accounts and breach pass
The past leaks as reliably as the present.
Read your map.
Score each thread you audited from 0 to 3: zero for nothing found, one for found with effort, two for found fast, three for found instantly with sensitive detail. Then act in this order.
| If your worst score is | Fix first |
|---|---|
| People-search or search engine | Run the Data Broker Removal Guide. It cuts the fastest-access threads in an afternoon. |
| Phone, photos, or accounts | Run the Phone Hardening Checklist, then close or lock the accounts your audit flagged. |
| Property and public records | These are the deep threads. The techniques run from mail redirection to legal structures, and this is the ground where professional help earns its keep. |
Re-run this audit twice a year. Exposure regrows quietly, and the audit is how you catch it early.
Where this knowledge comes from.
This audit draws on open-source intelligence practice and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense, with Privacy Guides and Darkveil methodology underneath. Both are worth your time, and both are free. Everything above is written by PDN in our own structure and words, verified against current practice.
This guide covers what you can do yourself. When the situation is a stalker or a public role, a threat that stays, that is Darkveil's work.
Talk to Darkveil