Five ways to delete
yourself from the Internet
If you're reading this, it's highly likely
that your personal information is available to the public. And while you can
never remove yourself completely from the Internet, there are ways to minimize
your online footprint. Here are five ways to do so.
Be warned however; removing your information
from the Internet as I've laid it out below, may adversely affect your ability
to communicate with potential employers.
1. Delete or deactivate your shopping, social network, and Web services
accounts.
Social networks include sites like Facebook,
Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Shopping accounts include information stored on
Amazon, Gap.com, Macys.com and others. And Web services might include cloud
storage accounts such as Dropbox and OneDrive.
To get rid of these accounts, go to your
account settings and just look for an option to either deactivate, remove, or
close your account. Depending on the account, you may find it under Security or
Privacy, or something similar.
If you're having trouble with a particular account,
try Googling "How to delete", followed by the name of the account you
wish to delete. You should be able to find some instruction on how to delete
that particular account.
If for some reason can't delete an account,
change the info in the account to something other than your actual info.
Something fake or completely random.
2. Remove yourself from data collection sites.
There are sites out there that collect your
information, mostly in order to sell you stuff. They have names like Spokeo,
Crunchbase, PeopleFinder, as well as plenty of others.
Now you could search for yourself on these
sites and then deal with each site individually to get your name removed.
Problem is, the procedure for opting out from each site is different and
sometimes involves sending faxes and filling out actual physical paperwork.
An easier way to do it, is to use a service
like DeleteMe at Abine.com. For
about $130 for a one-year membership, the service will jump through all those
monotonous hoops for you. It'll even check back every few months to make sure
your name hasn't been re-added to these sites.
3. Remove your info directly from websites.
First, check with your phone company or cell
provider to make sure you aren't listed online and have them remove your name
if you are.
If you want to remove an old forum post or an
old embarrassing blog you wrote back in the day, you'll have to contact the
webmaster of those sites individually. You can either look at the About us or
Contacts section of the site to find the right person to contact or go to www.whois.com and
search for the domain name you wish to contact. There you should find
information on who exactly to contact.
Unfortunately, private website operators are
under no obligation to remove your posts. So, when contacting these sites be
polite and clearly state why you want the post removed. Hopefully they'll
actually follow through and remove them.
If they don't, tip number four is a less
effective, but still viable, option.
4. Delete search engine results that return information about you.
This includes sites like Bing, Yahoo, and
Google. In fact Google has a URL
removal tool that can help you delete specific URLs.
For example, if someone has posted sensitive
information such as a social security number or a bank account number and the
webmaster of the site won't remove it, you can at least contact the search
engine companies to have it removed from search results.
5. And finally, the last step you'll want to take is to remove your
email accounts.
Depending on the type of email account you
have, the amount of steps this will take will vary.
You'll have to sign into your account and then
find the option to delete or close the account. Some accounts will stay open
for a certain amount of time, so if you want to reactivate them you can.
An email address is necessary to complete the
previous steps, so make sure this one is your last.
One last thing...
Remember to be patient when going through this
process. Don't expect it to be completed in one day. And you may also have to
accept that there some things you won't be able permanently delete from the
Internet.
