“If your growing weariness of being constantly tethered to the internet has become overwhelming, it might be time to scrub yourself from the social media sphere altogether,” Andrew Tarantola reports for Gizmodo. “Here’s how you can become a ghost on the Internet, by tracking down and eliminating your digital past.”
“Before you go hunting down your old MySpace and Yahoo Fantasy Sports accounts, you should probably go ahead and nix your existence from the four largest social media sites on the planet — Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn — seeing as how they have the greatest reach and the most information on you,” Tarantola reports. “Luckily, each service makes the self-destruct process fairly straightforward.”
“Once you’ve taken care of the four elephants in the room, it’s time to go after your smaller and older accounts. But unless you’ve been keeping meticulous notes on every single forum board and half-baked social site you’ve ever joined, you’re going to need to spend a fair amount of time tracking them all down,” Tarantola reports. “Luckily, there are tools for that.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
You also have to worry about Archive.org’s WayBack Machine. And if you don’t own the web site you are concerned about, there’s no hope of erasing your existence.
It doesn’t matter any more. Even if you never were online, someone has put your information on line anyway. It’s to the point, if you ever existed and wrote something down or someone wrote about you, or you were recorded on some census, you are bound to end up on the Internet. Your tax records, phone number, credit history, criminal history, etc. There may be barriers to access this information but it is there.
Exactly. It’s even more hopeless if you were ever “somebody”. You don’t even have to be a celebrity — if you are or ever were influential in some niche of interest, you’re going to be all over the internet in ways you can’t control.
Once upon a time, I was a big deal in a small fandom. When I searched the internet, I found pictures of myself hosting con panels, archives of stuff I’d written, and so on. None of this stuff is under my control.
——RM
The best way do deal with this is to actually manage your public image. You have to work at it, as anyone has ever done, or at least cared to do.
Don’t forget all of those posts you made to MDN website
Especially the ones posted by sanctimonious trolls like Zune Tang, Botvinik and BLN. Hopefully MDN will script a realtime internet /dev/null bit bucket to intercept all the hateful tripe they constantly post here. Or even better – just forward all their redneck/teabagger crap to some random fandroid forum so we don’t have to deal with it.
uh… Zune Tang (the real, original one anyway) is a troll like Stephen Colbert is an ultra-conservative.
Except Stephen Colbert is actually funny. If Stephen Colbert did his act like Zune Tang did, he’d just repeat whatever Bill O’Reilly said that night.
——RM
@ sid
obviously it’s true what they say, ‘ignorance is bliss.’ who could possibly be more hateful and sanctimonious, and what’s worse, oblivious than you?
at least botvinnik and bln are creative and humorous, not to mention insightful.
I have to reluctantly admit that botvinnik has had a few humorous posts lately. That does not offset his long history of garbage posts. botvinnik is not generally creative and humorous.
How can you possibly say that BLN is creative and humorous?! Your anonymous love fest with these two guys raises serious questions regarding your judgment, j.eric. Serious questions.
Zune Tang was a straight faced comedian, impenetrable, incessant. Comedy isn’t trolling.
Botvinik is a winking instigator and irritant. Stirring the pot isn’t trolling.
BLN is on Lithium and often forgets to take his meds. As such he’s had his good days and total dickhead days. That’s what it’s like living with a schizophrenic. But schizophrenia is not trolling.
Our pet generic anonymous cowards paid-by-Samsung: THOSE things are trolls. Their existence and the point of their existence has been proven and is entirely worthy of the most insulting of chastisement. I consider them a source of vile, ruthless enjoyment as well as ridiculous lies. Who better to hate on than the haters? More please Samsung!
😆 😈 😆
Maybe that’s just what Gizmodo, the publisher of this article should do too…
Wishful thinking Lam, we with real memories ( as oppesed to emmories) remember and don’t forget. Desperation.
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I’ve already wiped myself of the web. The only things are my linked in and Facebook. No addresses or emails or phone numbers exist. 🙂
Easier way to erase yourself from internet, be disparaging of Obamacare and have the regime come after you…
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/04/twitter-keeps-suspending-account-critical-of-obamacare/
Been to a few conspiracy theory parties lately, haven’t you. If you believe this stuff, then you need to get a tinfoil hat, pronto!
Or, you can be lucky and have a very common name as I do. Cripes, there are zillions of me!
This article is garbage. You can erase all of your social network accounts but that doesn’t make you safe. Your friends and family will still post and share photos/video of you with your name and other bits of information. Just because you don’t post your own information on the net doesn’t mean other people can’t and won’t.
That’s why I’m okay. I have no friends and family.
I’d love to scrub some old stuff. But I can’t remember the passwords.
Most places have ‘Forgot You Password’ processes you can use. So you get a new password, then you close it all down.
Yeah, that should read: ‘Forgot your Password?’
Dreaming forever. Flying in faerie land. Living in Disney World. Floating in the aether of space amidst the pretty stars and galaxies.
All of the above are far more practical ideas than ‘erasing’ one’s self from the Internet. Here’s one of many reasons why:
http://archive.org
But it’s certainly practical to remove as much of yourself as possible from the Internet, if that’s what you want.
But then there’s the problem of functioning in The Modern World. There’s a lot more to self-sufficiency and personal prosperity than freeing yourself from the Internet. There’s dirt and seeds and shovels and blisters and gloves and rain and sun and snow and wind and bugs and snail mail and bicycles and tires and chains and baskets and on and on. It’s a different kind of work.