Delete yourself from the internet

Delete yourself from the internet

In this age of multiple social media accounts and online personas, there are times when juggling and keeping track of all of them can be quite overwhelming.

There may even times that you would rather perform an online purge and scrape off your presence from the nooks and crannies of the internet – a digital version of hara-kiri if you will.

For these kinds of wannabe-incognito times, a Swedish website claims to provide a way to delete your online tracks with merely a few clicks of a button.

Deseat.me

The site is called Deseat.me and it was created by Swedish coders Wile Dahlio and Linus Unnebäck specifically for seeking and destroying all online accounts associated with your Google account.

This is how it works – after signing in with your Google account using Google’s OAuth protocol, which is a common standard that lets a service access a user’s information without giving it access to the user credentials, the site cranks its gears and searches for all the sites and apps your account is associated with.

Here are the steps for using Deseat:

  1. Visit deseat.me.
  2. Sign in with your Google account.
  3. Go through all the available websites it lists and select “delete,” add to delete queue,” or “keep.”
  4. Some sites may not work so you’ll have to visit these pages individually to delete your info.

It then generates a list and conveniently deletes direct links for each of these accounts, which include Facebook, YouTube, Evernote and LinkedIn. These links usually lead to the unsubscribe or deactivation page of these detected services.

If you think this service might be a Trojan horse that actually collects your data when it’s supposed to delete it, the site assures its users that that is not the case.

According to the Deseat site itself,

“Privacy and data security is something we regard as extremely important. In fact, it’s our number one focus from beginning to end. That’s why we built it to run on your computer. So basically the only thing you’re telling us is what accounts you want to delete. That’s it, and since we use Google’s OAuth protocol we don’t have access to any of your login information.”

Honestly, the site’s whole process is cumbersome and fairly limited but, to be fair, it’s more convenient and quicker than tracking down each and every one of your associated Google accounts manually.

Also, remember that Deseat does not and will not completely erase your entire online persona. It only helps you gather all the services associated with your Google account in one place so your online presence may vary. If you are using other email services for your other online accounts, then obviously this won’t work.

To check out Deseat and see if their “Clean Up Your Existence” tagline actually works for you, visit their official site, www.deseat.me.

How to safely delete data forever on your PC or Mac

Getting rid of an old computer? If you want to get serious about your personal security, you need to erase sensitive data for good. Click here to learn how.

Tags: Facebook, Google, internet, security