Abuse, harassment, intimidation, or even the desire to suppress an inappropriate tweet published several years ago or delete an unflattering photo on Facebook …
These are just some reasons anyone might want to erase their digital footprint and take control of their devices.
Social networks have become gigantic data vacuum cleaners that know almost everything about our online habits and behavior. When you share any content, you usually give up control of it.
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Delete Your Accounts On Social Networks That You Don’t Use And Your Profiles On Online Shopping, Dating, And Other Sites
Deactivating your account does not delete the data but hides your profile from your friends and searches. However, if you want to disappear, you can choose to permanently delete your profile as well as all information, saved articles, photos, orders, and messages.
Delete Your Information Directly From Websites
Deleting an account is relatively easy, but there is more to it. The next step is to monitor and clean up all websites hosting your information.
First, make a list of all the sites that you think you’ve actively engaged on at one time or another (creating connections, leaving comments, replying to forum posts, etc.).
Disable Data Brokers
Finding personal data on the Internet and selling it has become a very lucrative industry. There are two ways to do this: manual and automated methods.
You have the option to manually exclude yourself from data brokers, one by one, or use services like DeleteMe, allowing you to exclude yourself from databases automatically.
Delete Unwanted Search Results
Tackling Google may seem like a lost cause when the company already has the tools to help you remove unwanted results from the web.
If, for example, a third party disclose your sensitive data, Google has implemented a procedure to remove this information from search results.
Disable Your Email Accounts
This step is one of the last in the process, as you need your email address to complete the previous steps, including deleting the accounts associated with your email.
What To Do To Avoid Data Collection?
There are many other steps you can take to limit the sharing and dissemination of your data online. Here are Markuson’s recommendations in this area:
Limit your use of social networks. If privacy is your priority, forget about social media. The rise of biometric data-scraping ( some companies build their facial recognition databases from images retrieved from Facebook and Instagram ) shows that social networks pose a considerable threat to privacy.
Use a VPN. A VPN encrypts your browsing data and conceals your IP address, so your data remains invisible and cannot be exploited by marketing companies. While bad internet habits can be potentially problematic, a VPN can help keep your activities private and secure.
Also Read: Internet Search Engines
