Deleting your online presence
Tracking
down all your data won’t be easy. There is no one service that will trawl the
Internet for pieces of you, so start by tearing down your social profiles.
Start with JustDelete.me
A
site called JustDelete.me provides an
incredibly comprehensive list of email, social media, shopping and
entertainment sites, along with notes on how difficult it is to completely
erase your account and links to actually get it done. This is a great resource
to help you remember and find unused profiles as well as gauging how much
effort you’ll have to expend to shut it down.
Find other open accounts
Next,
review your email accounts, looking for marketing updates and newsletters to
get wind of other accounts you may still hold or companies that have bought
your email address. Then go through your phone and check for apps that have
required you to create accounts.
Once
you’ve created a list of accounts, you then should sort them according to how
often you use them, if at all. Delete any you don’t use. “Data is an asset to
these companies,” says Jacqui Taylor, CEO of web science company Flying Binary.
“Not only are these companies able to monetize you as their product, you aren’t
even receiving a service in exchange.”
Working
off your list of accounts, head back to JustDelete.me and use it as a
springboard to start deleting accounts.
Downloading and removing your content
If
there’s data you’d like to keep — say, photos or contact lists — you may be
able to download them before deleting your account. Facebook and Twitter data
can be downloaded in the respective Settings tabs, while LinkedIn contacts can
be exported via Contact Settings.
At
many sites such as Evernote and Pinterest, you won’t be able to delete your
account. You can only deactivate it and then manually remove personal data. At
sites such as Apple, this process includes a call to customer service.
Don’t forget background checking sites
To
find out which background check websites have posted information about you,
check out the list of popular sites on this Reddit
thread. Then go to each and try searching for your name. See if you
pop up in the first few pages of search results. If you do, the same Reddit
thread has information on opting out, but get ready for a hassle: usually
calling, faxing and sending in physical proof that you are who you say you are.
After that, expect to wait anywhere from 10 working days to six weeks for
information to disappear.
Sites that don’t allow complete withdrawal
A
large number of companies make it impossible to delete all traces of your
accounts. According to JustDelete.me, this list includes Etsy,
the online marketplace for home crafters, which retains your email address no
matter what; Gawker Media, which retains the rights to all posts you made; and Netflix,
which keeps your watch history and recommendations “just in case you want to
come back.”
Then
there’s Twitter,
which signed a deal with the Library of Congress in 2013 giving it the right to
archive all
public tweets from 2006 on. This means that anything you’ve posted
publicly since then is owned by the government and will stay archived even if
you delete your account.
To
prevent future tweets from being saved, convert your settings to private so
that only approved followers can read your tweets. (Go to the settings in the
security and privacy section.)
Shut
down your Facebook account by going to Settings, Security and then click
“Deactivate my account.” You can download all of your posts and images first by
going to Settings, General and then click “Download a copy of your Facebook
data.”
However,
you’ve already agreed to the social media giant’s terms and conditions, which
state that Facebook has the right to keep traces of you in its monolithic
servers. Basically any information about you held by another Facebook user
(such as conversations still in the other person’s inbox or your email address
if it’s in a friend’s contact list) will be preserved.For
services like eBay and Paypal, Taylor adds, you aren’t the product (both
collect fees from sellers), making it easier to delete your account and
associated data.
The right to be forgotten
Being
able to erase social and other online data is linked to a larger issue: the
right to be forgotten online. In the European Union, a recent Court of
Justice ruling gave EU residents the right to request that
irrelevant, defamatory information be removed from search engine databases.
However, no such service is available to the residents of United States.
“You
should be able to say to any service provider that you want your data to be
deleted,” Taylor says. “If someone leaves this earth, how can their data still
be usable by all these companies?”
When erasure isn’t an option
Much
of our personal data online is hosted on social platforms that regularly update
their terms of service to change how our data can be used. A privacy policy
that you were comfortable with when you signed on could evolve to become
something you don’t agree with at all.
“Your
digital footprint is not under your control if you’re using these free
services,” Taylor says.
Employers
frequently perform background checks through Google or dedicated third-party
social media checkers. In many professions, an online portfolio of work on the
likes of WordPress or Tumblr is a necessity. It’s becoming increasingly
difficult to communicate socially without the aid of a Facebook or Twitter
account.
Given the
realities of our connected world today, not being online can be seen as a
negative. The key, Taylor says, is to take ownership of your data. Control how
much of your personal data is available online by pruning inactive accounts.
Create new accounts selectively, and post with the understanding that within a
single update to the terms of service, your data could become publicly shared
or further monetized.