- You know, we should just bail.
If your personal data is so vulnerable online,
what if you delete personal data and leave for good?
Time to eat ourselves off the world web guys, off we go.
But do leave a like and subscribe before you are gone.
It's gonna help me a bunch.
(upbeat music)
As you can imagine, it's hard to delete personal information
from the internet completely.
So let's start with the three most problematic steps
you might not be able to complete.
First of all, there's a huge industry of data brokers
and scrapers, companies that take online data,
store it in databases,
and then sell it to interested parties.
Can you delete personal data from such a database?
Unlikely, but I list some options a bit further.
Secondly, accounts
from old or defunct websites,
they could easily
contain personally identifiable information,
and finding such websites could prove tricky,
especially if they no longer exist.
And, finally caching.
Even if you delete personal information from a website,
it might still remain in the cache of search engines.
And it might take a while before those are updated.
Potentially you can deal with data scrapers
in two ways, by contacting each data broker one by one,
which is a battle for privacy you will never win,
considering how long it will take,
or you can use a service like Incogni
to get rid of your personal footprint.
It's a paid service that will work for you,
demanding data brokers to get rid of your data.
Let's assume you've dealt with scrapers for now.
Time to get rid of social and all other accounts.
As long as you keep using those accounts,
the data about you keeps piling
and it extends to each service using your personal info.
Deleting accounts is pretty easy,
but it's just the beginning of the fight
for your internet privacy.
Make a list of websites where you've created logins,
left comments, replied to posts, and so on.
When you are done, time to cleanse this list,
focusing on websites you own.
This is straightforward, websites like whois.com
can help you find out who exactly owns a domain,
so you can make sure you are deleting the right thing.
Delete all posts and comments from the websites on the list.
Search is your best friend here.
And remember, deleting an account
doesn't always delete your posts and comments.
Use search engines.
Straight up Google your email address,
phone number, or name, and get rid
of every result one by one.
This can also bring up websites
that could have cloned or stored your data.
Next, let's see how
to delete personal information from Google.
It sounds impossible, but there's a form you can submit
to Google directly to either remove
or prevent personal info from showing on Google search.
You can also email owners
of the website and ask them to delete personal data.
And EU laws will actually support you in that,
if you are in the EU, of course.
And of course, delete your email account as a last step.
If everything was done right,
there shouldn't be any data left about you online.
Here comes the online privacy you were looking for.
However, that doesn't protect you
from further data collection.
So let's see how to anonymize online traffic next.
First and foremost, limit social media use.
Even just posting your face
for a profile pick can make you a target
of biometric scraping.
Since you can't avoid using a browser,
stick to a more privacy oriented one.
Chrome is big for sure, but Brave
and DuckDuckGo offer a more private browsing experience.
You can also use VPN to conceal your IPN activity online,
so that even your ISP won't know what you are doing there.
You can also get some
of the best VPN providers through a link below,
so give them a try.
And if you decide to delete personal information
from the internet, I wish you luck.
It might be a long and tedious process,
but feeling safe might be worth it.
If you have any questions, I hope you will ask me.
Thanks for watching, and I'll see you soon.
(upbeat music)