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Delete Yourself From Many Internet Sites By Pressing This Button (thenextweb.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the forget-me-now dept.

Two Swedish developers have created a site offering a way to wipe your entire existence off the internet in a few clicks. schwit1 quotes The Next Web: When logging into the website with a Google account it scans for apps and services you've created an account for, and creates a list of them with easy delete links. Every account it finds gets paired with an easy delete link pointing to the unsubscribe page for that service. In a few clicks you're freed from it, and depending on how long you need to work through the entire list, you can be account-less within the hour.
I'm a little uncomfortable giving a stranger's web site access to my personal information - even if it is for the purpose of deleting it altogether. But the original submission ends with an interesting question. "Can we get this for government databases too?"

4 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Here is the procedure I used by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Funny

    1) I loaded the site
    2) I selected everything I wanted to delete
    3) I pressed the delete bu

  2. Trust us by Dwedit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, send us your personal information and we SWEAR that we will try to help you delete stuff from other websites. Also free candy and puppies.

  3. A great big "Meh!" by marcle · · Score: 4, Informative

    I tried it, but it only finds Google-related accounts. Obviously, since your Google email is all it has to go by.
    There's a ton of accounts and subscriptions that I've got that this app knows nothing about.
    Why do they assume that all my accounts are necessarily linked to Google?

    Less than useful, unless you view the entire internet thru Google, in which case you've got worse problems than a few excessive accounts.

  4. Google account settings... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does it do anything that you cannot do by just going into your Google profile?

    If you go to myaccount.google.com, on sign-in and security you can manage all connected apps and sites, on device activity you can see devices used to login with your account, and on personal info & privacy you can control what Google logged from your activity.
    Obviously, there are also options to delete your Google account altogether, and I doubt this app thing will do anything more than that.

    If it doesn't, it's just too risky to give your account info like that for the extra convenience. Just get into your profile and adjust things yourself, it's not that hard.

    Also, no matter what these deletion services tell you, they cannot guarantee that some of that info won't be kept in some Google or other website services. They'll be limited to Google's API after all.

    For everything else, it's just better to go the pre-emptive route. Use private/anonymous browsing, create separate accounts, VPN, Tor, etc.