Being tracked online and having your personal data harvested has become commonplace. Every time we accept cookies, sign up for a service, or use an app, a little bit more of our information leaks away, and we invariably don't know in whose hands it ends up.

Why are big companies keeping track? The simple answer is advertising. The more they know about you, the more targeted advertising can be. On a fundamental level, it's why you'll see adverts for phones if you've been researching new phones.

That said, much of the data companies collect is kept a closely guarded secret-otherwise, how can they monetize it? What is more concerning to many people is the host of personal information publicly available on the World Wide Web. The stuff that everyone can see. All those things that come up when you Google yourself.

Of course, prevention is the best cure, and not uploading information to the web is the best way to keep it private, but let's be honest, we've all been doing it for years, and sometimes it's through no fault of our own. So instead of kicking ourselves about that high school picture we posted on Myspace in 2005, let's look at how to remove your personal information from Google easily.