If you are looking for a way to delete your fingerprint, all your private internet information with a single click, we regret to tell you that that does not exist. There is no trick to pressing a button and making everything you have uploaded so far disappear. You can’t erase yourself from the virtual world so easily.
If your personal information is “public” it means that it is everywhere. So how can we erase this information and prevent companies from acquiring such data? As we just said … the short answer is: we can’t. But not all is lost; There are ways to minimize the fingerprint, which would reduce the chances of our data falling into the wrong hands.
The only caveat to bear in mind is that if we definitely take this step, we must bear in mind that it can negatively affect our ability to find work.
To consider
If you want to improve your privacy online or need to remove something embarrassing that you uploaded in the past, you need to be patient. It is a process that can take a long time , at least a few days. Even then, there is a possibility that some of the information that cannot be recovered could be discovered.
Let’s start with the steps to minimize your fingerprint.
Delete or deactivate all shopping accounts, social networks and web services
Remember in which social networks you have profiles – active or not. Apart from the most popular ones like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, do you still have public accounts on sites like Tumblr, Google+ or even MySpace? What about your Reddit account? What shopping sites have you registered with? They are many? To get rid of these accounts like Amazon’s, you have to go to the account settings and look for an option to deactivate, delete or close it. Depending on the account, we will find this option in Security or Privacy, or something similar.
If you have problems with a particular account, try searching the internet for “How to delete”, followed by the name of the account you want to delete. Sure there are detailed instructions on how to delete that particular account. You will not be the only one. If, for any reason, you are still unable to delete an account, change the account information to something other than your actual information. Something false or completely random. Clever. Next step.
Delete old email accounts
One of the most important things is to delete the email accounts that you no longer use. Those accounts may contain certain sensitive personal information, such as address, phone numbers, or pictures. If you were using Outlook or Gmail as your primary email and you sign up for websites with them, there is a great online tool that can help us out. It’s called Deseat.me, which scans email to see which accounts we’ve signed up for and then allows you to easily sort them. You can choose to keep or delete them. Unfortunately, Deseat.me will sometimes have to do it manually. You can check out the tutorials on how to delete an account on certain websites at JustDelete.me or AccountKiller.
Search / Hunt all your information online
It’s time to clean up the leftovers. You can check what information about you is public and then try to delete it. The Google search engine is probably the best place to start your search. Quoting what you want to find will facilitate the objective, as Google will search for pages that will contain the name as it is written.
You can repeat the same process to search for emails, phones …
Ask Google for help
If someone has published confidential information such as a DNI number or a bank account number and the webmaster of the site where it was published does not delete it, we can send a legal request to Google to do so. The removal process can take some time and there is no guarantee that it will be successful, but it is also the best recourse if we are faced with such a vulnerable situation.
Unsubscribe from the mailing lists
All websites allow you to manually unsubscribe from their newsletters, but Unroll.me is a great alternative that makes the process a breeze. We simply have to log into Unroll.me with our email address and provide the necessary permissions (all email service providers are supported). Then we will go to “Edit subscriptions” and we will see all the subscriptions in a list. Click on “Cancel subscription” next to each service and that’s it. Unfortunately, since the activation of the GDPR in May 2018, the service is not available in the European Union. You will have to do it by hand.
Use fake emails
You can use temporary emails to subscribe to websites that you don’t trust. Emailtemporal or yopmail are some of the options.
Use a secure browser
This will not eliminate your presence on the internet but it will help you to have a clean presence in the future. There are many people concerned about privacy issues, and because of that, software engineers have created secure browsers that do not allow us to track our activities on the network, block ads, and hide our IP address.
Delete cookies
You should also delete all cookies to ensure that they cannot be linked to you by any means when you access these websites again. All browsers offer the option to delete cookies, but you can also use a cleaning tool like CCleaner to delete them all at once.
Lastly, remember to be patient when going through this process. You won’t be able to do it all in one day, and you may have to accept that there will be some things that you won’t be able to permanently remove from the internet.
