Almost everyone who has been online in the way of emailing, social networking and browsing, leaves a trace of themselves as they go. If you want to know how to stop the world from knowing every detail of the profile you thought you deleted, continue reading this guide.

Google yourself

If you want to know how strong your online presence is in the way of blogs, articles and embarrassing photos then simply type your name into Google in quotation marks.

By typing in for example “John Smith” the search engine will bring up results for John and Smith and will give you an idea of what a potential employer would find if they looked you up in Google.

What can I delete?

From heartfelt blog posts and embarassing party photos to important personal information such as your address and phone number; the Internet could have it all out there for people to see.

If you have any old social media profiles still live on the web that you wouldn’t want anyone to see, then be sure to delete them; you don’t want your future boss working their way through photos of you at 15 years old with pink hair. Just log in and deactivate or delete the account, simple.

Old blog posts are harder to get rid of as administrators will rarely remove posts you’ve written unless there is a court order. This is because it can make conversation threads incomprehensible.

And also, remembert that messages and wall posts, on other people’s profiles, will not automatically be deleted when your profile has gone, so think twice before you hit send!

How can I protect myself?

Social media will probably be the most visible part of you on the Web. In that previous Google search, your name, your Twitter or Facebook page were most likely at the top of the list.

There are privacy settings that allow you to limit access to your profile.

Facebook privacy settings have recently changed so that people’s profiles are automatically more open unless you go in and manually reset them. To do this, go to Settings and then Privacy Settings then go through and change every aspect of your profile so that Only Friends can see it.

With Twitter click on settings at the top right hand side of the page and scroll down to the box that says protects my tweets the hit save.

What software is there?

There are plenty of antivirus software packages out there that can help with online privacy. Make sure you get one that gets rid of cookies and offers spam and phishing protection. Selected programs offer a “stealth browsing” mode which makes you invisible to hackers when you’re online.

Norton 360, McAfee Total Protection, PC Tools Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security all do this. Check out our reviews for our favourite products.

There are lots of programmes to protect you online, even ones hat prevent you from posting messages and blog entries when you are drunk. They do this by monitoring the amount of spelling mistakes you make when you type, well worth investing in if you are a serial drunken blogger!