How to Delete Yourself from the Internet

One may remove a lot of online information and social media accounts to reduce digital footprint. If you’ve been a victim of cybercrime, you may need to make this severe move. Continue reading to learn how to delete yourself from the internet and significantly reduce your digital footprint.

Have you had data breaches, identity theft, bank fraud? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, you may want to consider deleting yourself from the internet. There’s good and bad news when you want to remove yourself from the internet. You can’t erase yourself completely. For example, court records, government agency documents, professional licenses and motor vehicle records are here to stay.

Enlarge

Delete Your Online Accounts to Delete Your Self from the Internet

Most of us don’t realize how may online accounts we have accumulated online. We sign up for a variety of accounts such as Netflix, Amazon, Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc. Even if you haven’t especially the ones, you don’t use anymore. This is not an easy task. It is time-consuming, and each service has the own policies and procedures for deactivation.

Another suggestion is to erase all your searches on Google. Let’s talk about Facebook, a lot of us expose more of our life than we need to especially with the latest security breach. You can deactivate or delete your Facebook depending on if you are taking a break or permanently leaving the site.

Remove Yourself from Date Broker Sites

Believe it or not, almost anyone can have access to your phone number, address and your criminal record for little or no charges from the various people search sites. People search sites like Intelius collect information for public records and then sell to websites such as Spokeo who usually add on additional date from social networks.

All this personal information is floating around on the internet for internet “trolls” to access and use against you in many damaging ways. If you want to remove your information from data broker sites, you need to contact them directly and ask how to remove yourself from people search sites.

Enlarge

Close Your Email Accounts

This is a huge step and not for everyone, and most people decide to turn back at this point and determine that internet abstinence is not for them. Email is the most popular method of communication in the world. Email addresses are used for a multitude of digital transactions including online banking.

You cannot just stop using your email and leave the account open. It could get hacked without your knowledge. Each email server is different and closing your account varies from system to system. As stated, there are numerous email servers, and each is different. Listed next are two of the most popular and the instructions for deleting your account.

For example, Gmail is the most popular email service out there with over a billion users. Before you close your email account, make sure to download all your old data. You may need this archive of correspondence and contacts in the future. To delete the account, log in and go to Account Preferences page, the delete products and follow the instructions of which the final one is “delete Gmail account.”

All email servers have a “How to Delete” search bar that provides you with specific instructions.

Use a VPN

Giving up the internet is a huge step. No more online banking, shopping. Most of us are very accustomed to web-based conveniences. If you are not ready to end your internet activity, you can make browsing more private by using “virtual private network” or VPN. This secure network encrypts your connections which makes it more difficult to hack. For example, employees working remotely, create an encrypted connection with the company network to operate safely. Consumers can use VPN too.

Enlarge

Personal Legal Information

If someone has posted sensitive information of yours such as your Social Security number, and you’ve contacted the webmaster of the site to remove it be won’t bother, then you may send a legal request to Google to have it removed.

Removing yourself from the Internet is an important step. Remember it will take time to go through this process and will not be complete in a day. Also, you will have to accepts that some things won’t be permanently removed from the internet. If you are not ready for this action, take what you learned from this article and remove the things that are obsolete or too. Be mindful of what you are doing and posting on the internet and take precautions to protect yourself.

Social Catfish is always here to help and can be utilized in a variety of ways to assist you with protecting yourself by using our reverse lookup service. Use the Search Bar below to try it out for yourself:

We also have a service where you may hire one of our In-Depth Search Specialists who will research information they can find to verify the identity of someone.