Spring clean your online life

The following is a guest post from the DAT Security team.

As the seasons change, it’s the perfect time to not only declutter your home but also freshen up your digital life. Just like clearing out closets and junk drawers, tidying up your online presence can bring peace of mind and even help protect your personal information. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to take a few simple steps that can make a big difference.

Here are a few easy ways to get started.

• Tidy up your inbox: Unsubscribe from emails you no longer read. Services like Unroll.Me or Clean Email can help make this easier.
• Refresh your passwords: Choose strong, unique passwords — especially for important accounts like email and banking. A password manager like LastPass can help you stay organized.
• Clear out old accounts: Think about websites or services you signed up for ages ago and no longer use. Consider deleting them to reduce your digital footprint. You can use haveibeenpwned.com to check if your email or credentials were exposed in any known data breaches — if so, it’s a good reason to close those accounts and update your passwords.
• Check your privacy settings: Social media platforms like Facebook Privacy Checkup and Google Account Security let you control what you share and who sees it.
• Clean up your online presence: Forget Me helps you ask Google and other websites to take down old or unwanted personal information, like your name showing up in search results. It’s an easy way to clean up what people can find about you online.

A little cleanup goes a long way.

Taking just 30 minutes to refresh your digital life can help keep your info safer, reduce online clutter, and make you feel more in control. It’s like giving your online self a breath of fresh air.