Slashdot Mirror
Is It Possible To Erase Yourself From the Internet?
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."
How do I get rid of all those incriminating posts from all that time I wasted on /. while I was at work?
No.
by using a handle (pseudonym) and never your real name.
Take that, Zuckerberg and Schmidt
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.
I'm not happy when people dig into forums and start scrubbing bits out of them; it means that if I want to keep an accurate history of things I can look at, I need to save a copy, and if I'm having an internet argument with someone I need to stash a copy of everything they say on my website (or at least ready to go up there) to preserve coherency.
For people who I think might try to disappear, or for people who frequently delete or censor their blogposts/discussion posts, I already do this, but it's a pain in the butt. I don't want it to be more common.
It's healthier for society to accept that people change than to let everyone reenact 1984 every time they get nervous.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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
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.
But you'll need loads of cash, connections in South America and a replacement face.
On a serious note, no. I have always been careful (since CompuServe) but there are some traces, if you dig usenet. Most sites from back then are gone. Lucky I have a generic name, first hit is a guy somewhere far away, so I am happy...
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
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.
Many years ago you could e-mail an address at google, yahoo, as well as others and they would remove your personal data from the listings. I used to do it every year. Do a search on my self and remove all reference to me. It worked great but they all stopped it and no longer honor requests for removal.
They really should bring it back, Not saying there needs to be a law but a movement to be an upstanding member of the online community and let you request removal of your information.
Even your kids school records were visible on the internet back a few years ago, as well as all property and marriage/divorce transactions.
But you can obfuscate things and edit some of them.
You'll still be there, and any decent investigator could find it, but not the average person doing a google search.
Besides, they're all on the Wayback Machine.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Of course it is, do you have a very large asteroid handy?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm not on the internet in the first place. Any site that asks for a real name didn't get one. I never touched myspace or facebook, etc. Even my Gmail name is fake. So I'm all set.
I have a solution, but it involves simultaneous use of biological viruses and nukes. At a minimum, my solution will at least erase anyone's desire to care.
I make people think I'm another harmless fool on the internet.
By pretty much being another harmless fool on the internet.
Remember. Sincerity is the key to everything.
Once you can fake that, the rest is easy.
Assuming you have a bank account and a credit report, you can't. The info is stored somewhere, which undoubtedly is a computer connected to the internet.
While, in the US (or even the EU), we're not likely to see a "right to be forgotten", we might have a "right not to have one's identity exploited for advertising purposes". You should be able to quit an ad-supported service and insist that none of your data every appear on a page with an ad. If it does, the advertiser has to pay you a publicity fee. California has a law like that for photos - if you use someone's photo in an ad without their permission, you owe them at least $500 - much more if they're famous.
If 100% of everything anyone ever did and said were preserved for all of history, it would be the best thing that could happen for privacy.
Sure everyone could find any information they wanted, but that information would be less exploitable.
For example, a company you applied for a job to finds a picture of you getting wasted on New Years. Should they not hire you because you are a drunk? Well it turns out that they can also find drunk pictures of just about every applicant so you are no different.
Every single "bad" thing about you will either turn out to be something that is not really that bad in light of the fact that almost everyone does it, or actually bad (in which case you might need to go to jail).
Another example: Your girlfriend finds out you cheated on her using google. You are an asshole. It also turns out that 70% of the people she knows have cheated. It also turns out she cheated on you too. This sucks. Well yes, but was it worse than when we all successfully hid our cheating? At least now cheating doesn't seem as bad. In fact it may not even be considered cheating anymore since everyone knows about it immediately after it happens.
The real reason for wanting privacy is to not be able to be singled out. If everyone is able to be singled out, then nobody is able to be singled out. When a regular polygon gets infinite sides, it becomes a circle with 0 sides.
I was thinking about this earlier today while reading the article on Raytheon's Riot Program. I don't know if you can effectively remove yourself from the internet, but you might be able to muddy up your profiles with garbage to the point that the information that can be gleaned about you from the internet is of little or no value to a mass data harvester like Riot. I think this is the way to go in the future. You can't erase the data someone has already compiled about you, but you can feed the beast garbage until it vomits.
How do I get rid of all those incriminating posts from all that time I wasted on /. while I was at work?
Log out and sign up with a different nick.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
that's the only way to be sure.
As a fellow AC you should know better. The question is wrong. Keep the signal to noise ratio high and you will never have a need to regret your internet diving past.
Facebook is an intel organization
I have nothing else to say but that seemed relevant
Mid-80s UNIX discussion groups. Used the the telephone version of the internet at the beginning. I used my real name them because thats all schools would allow on your account. Plus local servers erased stuff 30 days old due to disk space then. I never foresaw ten years later google would buy up all the archives and put it searchable online. But now google has "aged out" lots of its older stuff. Or it drops 50 pages deep unless you home in on it exactly.
no
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
No you can't erase yourself from the internet. Free Speech means people can talk about you. They can talk about where you live, what you did, and all the things they hate about you. You may be able to erase a few things you posted here or there, but you can't erase history without trampling on peoples civil rights.
Oh how I wish the wayback machine could remove all the old geocities data...
Seeing as Bill Gates ended his Reddit AMA with this this image today, I'm gonna say no. - http://i.imgur.com/D3qRaty.jpg
His name is Hash isn't it?
Of course! My good friend Hash Tag! We went to university together--great guy... Can really wail on the guitar.
Who did what now?
I'm not taking any chances. I'm repartitioning and reformatting the Internet, wiping 37 times with random 1's and 0's
The Admin and the Engineer
Do you remember what you posted on that music forum in 2004?
I have never posted to a music forum. But if I did post something offensive or objectionable so what? Anyone that judges too harshly on such minor matters is best avoided anyway.
Or which services you tried for webmail before Gmail?
I used my own webmail before and after gmail. I once setup a gmail account solely to send my mail server test emails.
It discusses how difficult it is to get your data removed from Facebook
I've never had a facebook account. If I wanted the US government to build semantic graphs about my interpersonal relationships then I'd get a facebook account, but until that time I don't see the need for facebook in my life.
No, and it shouldn't be possible. Using an alias online is just smart practice, but something's got to be done about the rampaging herds of Internet Fuckwads (greater or lesser). How appropriate would it be for past online shithattery to come back and bite the shithatterists. "I see here you've got an MBA, Mr. Douchesuit, but can you explain why you had an AOL account for 8 years, and what led you to choose the handle T!ts0rG+FO?"
"It's like peeing in a pool. Once it's in there, it's _in_ there." - some old 90s sitcom
rm -fR -u $USER /dev/eth0 should work.
Sneaky fuckers...
What do you think is the best method to get people to update old data? Require them to prove themselves in order to delete it, then simply ignore their request to delete it.
The moment you touch that old data, you've updated it with your current IP address. Once they have that, they can then connect the dots between new and old data, thus providing them with a much greater amount of information.
Wow that shows as hunter2 to me
Some erasing will eventually happen. Smaller forums, newsgroups etc... will eventually die (domain expires, owner loses interest, they become spamfests and then are punished by Google's algorithms etc...).
They're there in their room. You're on your own.
I had an early /. account that I forgot my log in information to. I would like the cred that my low digit number would bring. Is there any way I could reactivate my first account. Or is all my cred already blown because who would forget something as important as that?
All it takes is one asshole figuring out your real name and bam, they can streisand your identity all over the internet across a bunch of servers.
And all it takes is one asshole sysop to say "fuck no" to your request to disappear and you're stuck.
Once your data is on someone else's server, you are at their mercy and they have you by the balls.
You'll need to change your computer, OS, ISP, web browser, IP address, email address, credit card number, paypal account, facebook account, geographic location, etc. as well, otherwise the marketing companies will just use that stuff to match the new name against the old one in their database.
Erasing himself from the Internet is no small feat.
If someone manages to do it, I'm sure his story will be in every tech news sites... oh wait...
1. You need to vanish from the internet yourself
2. you need the total cooperation of the admin of every server your info has shown up on.
3. you need the total cooperation of everyone who could put your information back on
In short, it's an exercise in diplomacy and social engineering. It has little to do with technical issues.
Just shoot your hard drives. That's what Adam Lanza did, and all the media reported he "left no online trace".
If you load up a virtual machine then there are no unique cookies, fonts, or anything on it uniquely you.
to move to another country and change your name ? Or at least just change your name , and manufacture an excuse that lets you get a new social sec number ? http://askville.amazon.com/social-security-number/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=2358575
Nice!! And just one more question - do you keep it all at your residence? Or the stores? ... Then again, NC is pretty lax on gun laws... :)
And enter the witness protection program.
It's almost certainly easier to scrap your identity in real life than online.
You only need one leak between a consistent alias and your legal identity to connect all the dots
"Taco Cowboy" has been my consistent alias, and it needs only *** ONE leak to connect the dot between the real me, and "Taco Cowboy"
With that in mind, I never participate on any event that connects my real world identity with my online alias
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...is a ' snapshot' in time. You were there!
You're in it and you don't erase that past, neither.
Ever heard about Big Data? That's where companies use software to identify people from their postings on popular forums - LinkedIn, Twitter, ... I work in a company that produces this kind of SW. We are doing well.
One does not simply delete something from the Internet
Create a lot of profiles with your name, with a lot more interesting things than you. John Smith the actor. John Smith the nuclear physicist. John Smith who saved the USA from danger. Just make it up and post it.It has to be crazy enough that people don't know its you. You could pay people to change their name to John Smith and do things to get in the news - like pissing of the balcony at a film Premier, making a life-sized bacon statue of Muhammad, attempting to ascend Everest on a pogo-stick, or descent on a spacehopper. Anonymously start a cult who's members all have to change their name - at which point you can anonymously use your real name. Soon anyone who searches for John Smith will have to go to the 99'th search page to find you.
A lot of people have said "No, never". But this isn't entirely true, for a number of reasons that are more to do with practicalities than anything else:
- If you - or someone else with the same name as you - is reasonably active online, then Google et al will prefer more recent things when someone searches for you. That ill-advised comment you made on a forum ten years ago? Unless you have a very unusual name, probably no longer a problem.
- Things come and go, and when they disappear from the spotlight your data tends to vanish into obscurity with them. Forums, news aggregators, social networking sites are all subject to this. When was the last time you logged into Friends Reunited?
- Even if your name is plastered all over the news for something - news websites get updated, moved onto new platforms - and quite often the archives don't entirely survive the transition. Archive maintenance is a low priority when the thing that gets pageviews and advert clicks is the recent news.
2. Open up each page where your name appears.
3. Apply White-Out.
Problem solved!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Sorry, tl;dr.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Barring some exceptions (Streisand et al.), it's usually the nobodies who care about this. They're the most vocal "right to forget" advocates. Seeking to remove everything about them on the Internet helps them feel more important than they really are. This is not meant to offend them, as there are legitimate needs to remove that one embarrassing photo or video... but we're talking about people who want to vanish entirely off the Net here.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
While you can "easily" remove your account from Google/Facebook etc, its impossible to remove your account from Forums, I am registered at the past on forums that I don't use anymore, there is no effing way to delete your account, I bet this is intentionally, as *if* you could remove your account (and *if* possible your posts) there would be a mess on the forums. Also another big shit on the internet, is the mail lists that their archives are visible, so even you are off from one list, your posts and email are still there...
"Is It Possible To Erase Yourself From the Internet?"
Should be
"Is It Possible To Erase Yourself From the world-wide-web?"
The Internet is the network, not the content the op is talking about.
@peetm