How To Delete Yourself From The Internet
You will never be able to completely delete yourself from the internet (remove all your traces), but at least you can minimize them.
Data brokers collect detailed information about whom we are based on things like our online activity, real-world purchases, and public records. Together, this is enough to ascertain your political leanings and health status.
This is no reason to give up! There are a whole lot of steps you can take to protect your privacy like you can clear your Google results. You’ll need time, money, and patience, and live in a country or state with strong privacy laws for the best results.
Delete Yourself From The Internet
You cannot completely delete yourself from the Internet. There will always be a little bit of you, whether it’s in a data-broker database, on old social media you forgot, or behind someone else’s vacation photos on Flickr, Facebook, etc.
Start with Google
Most people think of Google when they worry about their data online. The search engine is the largest indexer of websites, but it is often the only messenger. Know that anything you manage to remove from a search result will probably still exist on the site that’s hosting it until you take it down. You may also want to ask those sites to remove it.
First, Google itself. Keep a list of where your information is popping up, and look for anything particularly personal, such as your address or phone number, any kind of identification details (driving license numbers), or other information you find inappropriate. Match your name with your address or phone number in the search field.
Google recently added a form where you can request the removal of certain results or information, including explicit photos if they are fake, posted without your consent, or simply randomized to your name. are visible and do not portray you. There is an option to delete information that can be used for docking you, such as ID numbers, financial information, medical records, physical address, and other contact information.
Delete Old Online Accounts
There’s no real shortcut to finding and deleting accounts you no longer use. But if you really want to shrink your online presence, you’ll need to track down those old social media accounts and remove all traces of them. For that, you’ll need a web browser – preferably on a laptop or desktop – and a good chunk of time.
Start by making a list of all the old accounts you can remember, try to log in or recover if you forget log-in details one by one. For each, you’ll need to navigate through the removal process. As an easy starting point, you can go to Justdelete.me it has a list of links that point to deletion pages of everything from Gumtree to Vimeo.
If your list of accounts to delete is running low, it’s worth checking your password manager or saving logins in your browser to refresh your memory. Alternatively, you can search your inbox for old subscriptions and online accounts. Entering my email or phone number in the data-violation-notification service Have I Been Pwned? will trace over 500 data breaches to your details and remind you of some obscure old accounts you forgot about. However, you will still have to work hard to close the accounts.
Clean Up Your Digital History
Even if you’re not deleting your online accounts, you can still clear the data you store online. It’s possible that you have thousands of old messages (and attachments) in your email account that are years old; You may still have posts on your Facebook and Twitter accounts that you didn’t want to be publicly disclosed again.
If you’re using Gmail, you can bulk-delete older messages by using the search command “older_than:” and adding a time period (for example 1y or 6m), and then select all messages to delete them, can remove your old Emails. Or you can read in more detail to clear Gmail storage.
Publicly posted data—either photos or text—is obviously more likely to be found by others. If you are considering deleting your current profile or existing posts, consider downloading and backing up your posts first. Almost all major social media platforms have backup options in their settings so you can backup your Photos and Videos easily.
Twitter doesn’t have a tool to easily delete all your old tweets in bulk, but third-party services do. Tweet Deleter and TweetDelete will both get rid of your old tweets. If you are deleting in bulk, both services can get a bit messy when handling years of data.
Except for the $5.99 monthly cost of TweetDeleter, it may be worth deleting an unlimited number of Tweets at once. Keep in mind that by allowing any third-party service access to your online accounts, they may be able to access information stored within them, such as your Direct Messages. Both companies’ privacy policies describe what they do with your data. Alternatively, if you want to delete your Twitter account completely, then you have to follow these steps.
Google doesn’t index your personal Facebook posts, so they won’t appear in its search results. But if you’re trying to get your history off the internet as much as possible, you should also delete your old posts or at least block people from viewing them. On Facebook head to Settings & Privacy, Activity Log, and select the type of activity you want to delete — from posts to photos you’re tagged in. The tool isn’t the most streamlined if you want to remove years of use of Facebook, but like all attempts to erase yourself from the Internet, you’ll get better results if you spend more time doing it. Alternatively, you can just delete your Facebook account completely.
Last tip
Avoid using Big Tech for all your online activities where possible. Choose a web browser and search engine that does not collect your data; Use end-to-end encrypted apps and make messages disappear when appropriate; And understand what data WhatsApp, Instagram, Google, Amazon, Spotify, and others collect about you.