If you’re reading this, your personal information is probably public knowledge. And by “public,” I mean anybody and everyone anywhere. The beginning of a new year is an excellent opportunity to get your online privacy ducks in order and effectively “remove” oneself from the internet. But how does removing oneself from the internet prevent firms from obtaining your personal information? The short answer is no.
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Deactivate or delete your online shopping, social networking, and web service accounts
Consider which social media networks you have profiles on. Do you still have old profiles on sites like Tumblr, in addition to the major ones (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn)? MySpace? What about your Reddit page? Which purchasing sites have you signed up for? Common examples are data saved on Amazon, Gap.com, Macys.com, and others.
To delete these accounts, navigate to your account settings and look for the option to deactivate, remove, or close your account. Depending on the account, it might be under Privacy, Security, or something similar.
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Remove yourself from sites where data is collected
Some companies keep track of your personal information. Data brokers operate websites such as Spokeo, Whitepages.com, and PeopleFinder, among others. They gather information on everything that you do online and sell it to third parties, mostly to promote to and sell to you more specifically.
You may now look for yourself on these websites and contact each one individually to get your name removed. The difficulty is that each site’s opt-out procedure is different, and it frequently requires sending faxes and filling out paper forms. Physical. Paperwork. What year are we discussing this time?
In any case, using a service like DeleteMe is a much easier way to go. The service will jump through all those tedious hoops for you for $129 each year. It will even keep checking every few months to ensure that your identity hasn’t been re-added to these sites.
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Remove your information from websites directly.
If you wish to delete an old forum post or an embarrassing blog you made years ago, you must contact the webmaster of such sites individually. You can look in the About Us or Contacts sections of the website to identify the correct person to contact, or you can go to whois.com and search for the domain name you want to contact. There should be information there on who to contact.
Unfortunately, private website proprietors are under no responsibility to delete your posts. So, when contacting these sites, be courteous and explain why you want the message deleted. Hopefully, they will follow through and delete it.
Unfortunately, private website proprietors are under no responsibility to delete your posts. So, when contacting these sites, be courteous and explain why you want the message deleted. Hopefully, they will follow through and delete it.
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Remove personal information from websites
You can file a formal removal request with Google if somebody has posted critical data concerning you, including your Social Security card or bank account details, and the owner of the site where it was posted refuses to erase it.
Although the removal process will take time and there is no promise of success, it is your best alternative if you find yourself in this perilous situation.
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Remove any outdated search results.
Let’s say you wish to delete a webpage that contains private information regarding you, such as the worker’s page of your previous workplace, months after you’ve moved jobs. You contact them and ask that the page be updated. They do, however when you Google your name, although your name is nowhere to be discovered when you click the link, the page still displays in the search results. This means that Google’s servers are still cached with the previous iteration of the page.
That’s when this tool is useful. Submit the URL to Google with the expectation that it would refresh its servers, deleting the saved search result and linking you to the website. For numerous reasons, there’s no guarantee that Google will delete the cached information, and it’s worth a chance to banish more of your internet presence as possible.
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Finally, the last thing you should do is delete your email accounts.
The number of steps will vary according to the type of email account you have.
Sign in to your account and look for the option to delete or close the account. If you wish to reactivate an account, it will remain available for a specific period.
An email address is needed to finish the previous stages, so make this your final one.
