Have you ever wondered if you could disappear?
Going off the grid is hard these days.
With trackers, cookies, and search history, the internet knows more about you than your
closest friends.
Which isn't a good thing.
Shady data brokers and morally questionable social media moguls shouldn’t be the ones
in control of your data.
It begs the question — could you delete yourself from the internet?
If you’re interested in taking control of your privacy, subscribe to NordVPN’s YouTube
channel for more content on digital security and privacy!
If you’ve been using the internet for years, erasing yourself from it won’t be easy.
Once you share anything about yourself online, you lose control of that information most
of the time.
But not all is lost.
The first step is to understand what’s out there, so you can start scrubbing away your
online presence.
Here’s where data scraping comes in.
There’s an entire industry dedicated solely to collecting and selling your data.
Erasing your information from their databases can be very difficult or even impossible,
but there are a few methods you can try.
You can start manually opting out of data brokers, one by one (this is easier if you
have a lot of patience and plenty of coffee).
Contact the data brokers directly to opt out of their data collection practices.
You can also use services like DeleteMe that let you opt out of data brokers automatically.
But they are not cheap and some, like DeleteMe, only work in the U.S.
The second area of concern is your online accounts.
It’s easy enough to track down and delete, anonymize or hide accounts you use every day.
However keep in mind that even closing some accounts won’t actually permanently delete
your data.
We’ll post the links with detailed guides on how to go about closing most popular social
media accounts in the description.
But social media is just a tiny piece of the puzzle.
Don’t forget about shopping, dating, and other services.
We’ll leave the guides for opting out of the most popular online services in the description
as well.
Don’t forget about your old accounts too.
Even if you haven’t used them in years, they might still be holding your personal
information.
Remove your information directly from websites The next step is to start auditing and cleaning
up any websites that host your data.
Make a list of the websites you have been active on — created logins, left comments,
and so on.
Close down the websites you own.
Whois.com might have a record of that if you’ve forgotten.
Scrub yourself from forums.
Mind that some forums won’t delete your messages even if you close your accounts down.
Use the search function to find your posts and edit them, leaving only a period in place
of your original message.
Also, check to make sure other people’s posts don’t mention your details.
Run your information through search engines.
This can flag up other websites that may have cloned or logged your information.
You can email the owner of the site and ask them to remove certain data.
If you’re in the EU, you can use the GDPR’s Article 17 (also known as the right to be
forgotten) to force sites to take down your personal information.
When it comes to other unwanted search results, fighting with Google may seem like an impossible
task, but it actually already has the tools to help you wipe unwanted results from the
web.
For example, if someone exposes your sensitive data, Google has a process in place to remove
that information from search results.
We’ll link to it in the description below.
Now it’s time for one of the last steps in the process — deleting your email accounts.
It’s one of the last, because you will need your email to complete the previous steps.
We’ll link to the steps in the description.
Removing yourself from the online world is difficult, and it’s only going to stay permanent
if you never use the internet again.
If you don’t want to go for the nuclear option, here are some things to keep in mind
if you want to limit the data about yourself on the web.
Limit your social media use.
Use privacy-focused browsers.
Use a VPN.
Let us know how it went in the comments below!
And if you decide you don’t want to delete your social media, follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram!