What your digital footprint actually includes

Your digital footprint includes accounts you use today, ones you forgot about years ago, and anything public that mentions your name. A 2026 Cloaked survey of 1,057 US adults found 43% appear on the first page of Google results when they search their own name, and 38% of the people who felt confident about their results didn't show up on page one at all. People often guess wrong about what's public. Most of what turns up sits in ordinary search results and old social profiles.

A digital footprint matters most when someone else looks at it before you get a chance to explain it. US research from Express Employment Professionals and The Harris Poll, surveying 1,002 hiring decision-makers in December 2022, found 70% of companies use social media to research candidates, and 51% of hiring managers said they had never found anything that stopped them hiring someone. Employers do look, and most of what they find changes nothing.

Deleting a post can leave your digital footprint unchanged if someone already saved, screenshotted or shared it elsewhere. A repost or a screenshot can outlive the original by years. Loomis shows you what is already public, the way anyone else would find it, so you can decide what to do.

Checking your own digital footprint starts with searching your own name the way a stranger would, then working through every account tied to you, old and current. A free Loomis Footprint check does that search for you and lists the public accounts it can confidently match to you in one place.