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Is It Possible To Erase Yourself From the Internet?

Posted by samzenpus on from the back-in-the-shadows dept.

Barence writes "Do you remember what you posted on that music forum in 2004? Or which services you tried for webmail before Gmail? We often forget online services, but they don't forget us. PC Pro has investigated whether it's possible to retrospectively wipe yourself from the internet. It discusses how difficult it is to get your data removed from Facebook, Google and other popular web services, as well as reputation management services that promise to bury unwanted internet content on your behalf."

8 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Step 1 - NEVER close an old email account by gubon13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't speak to getting rid of specific old traces of yourself, but you're definitely SOOL if you close the email account on which old forum/website accounts were based. Even removing data from spokeo.com and similar sites is based on access to email addresses that, again, were associated with old accounts.

  2. Whats the internet? by vlm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whats the internet? They just listed some specific services. I'm on usenet going back to 1989, I believe. Certainly 1991 at worst. Anyone younger than 35 or so pretty much just said "usenet? whats that?"

    Amusingly they didn't list what it takes to remove yourself from compuserve (I was on from 1981 till... donno) and prodigy and myspace and ...

    30 years from now you'll mention you were on linkedin and the 22 year old girls in HR who filter the resumes will say, "huh? Whats a linkedin?" Ditto facebook, G+, etc.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  3. Don't do it! by The+Good+Reverend · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've never understood the fascination so many tech luddites and techies-who-think-they're-cool-by-hating-being-on-the-internet to try to erase their online presence. It'll only come back to bite you.

    You don't have to share everything, but establishing your presence and "owning your name" gives you some measure of control in regards to what people find if they search for you. If you go the "you can't see me" route, anyone with a vendetta or anything (good or bad) that gets you in the news is suddenly all anyone searching sees. You can't control everything by being online, but you certainly have more control than if you try to hide.

  4. change your name by stenvar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can erase your history completely if you change your name. Your new name (if well chosen) will have no Internet history associated with it.

  5. Re:This problem is easily solved by Kenja · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And never buy a house or sign up for anything offline or do anything that ever goes into any form of public record. Basically, you need to go live in a cabin in the woods.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  6. FTFY by tacokill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Facebook is an intel organization

    1. Re:FTFY by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately, even if you are aware and intelligent, that doesn't stop the stupid from tagging your happy anonymous butt in that picture they took 10 years ago of you with their sister... and blammo, now you are "in the system" and identified, your correlation factor may be low, but something will come up when you're queried and if it's the only thing....

      The only way to "erase" yourself is not to remove all bits of you, but to poison the well. Create many false accounts and post lots of irrelevant things, some about you with bad data if you're already all over the net. The higher the noise level you create with the more false data, the less valuable the "true" data is since data mining becomes less and less certain. Another fun thing - make some accounts with variations of your name, close but not exact, then post the passwords in forums and let random people take them where you want. Remember, you're not interested in reputation - you're interested in bad data.

      Your last option would be to have been born a John Smith or Kim Davis - I've known a few of both. Locating specific people with those names is rather difficult.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  7. Re:It's the New You by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You only need one leak between a consistent alias and your legal identity to connect all the dots though. The idea that you'll be forever vigilant and never goof up on an alias is a bit optimistic. Why is that approach any less prone to mistakes than being vigilant about your real name? You could rotate aliases instead, but that increases complexity, and complexity introduces its own increased odds of error. You could make the same argument about having a single alias too. I see having to guard at least one usernames as being unavoidable if you want to participate on discussion forums. I don't have any illusions that using a non-real name on its own provides me improved security though.