Rechercher
Contactez-nous Suivez-nous sur Twitter En francais English Language
 

Freely subscribe to our NEWSLETTER

Newsletter FR

Newsletter EN

Vulnérabilités

Unsubscribe

How to erase yourself from the internet

December 2021 by NordVPN

A digital privacy expert takes you through all the necessary steps to erase your online presence.

(c) Shutterstock

There are many reasons why people might want to delete their online presence. Abuse, stalking, bullying or applying to a new job as a misjudged tweet from years ago or an inappropriate Facebook photo can destroy future job prospects - these may be just a few reasons why people decide to erase digital footprints and seize control of their devices.

“Social networks became data-slurping machines that know nearly everything about us and our online habits. When you share something online, you usually give up control of that piece of data. It may still belong to you, but it’s very difficult for you to limit who has access to it and what it’s used for,” says Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy expert at NordVPN.

Deleting yourself from the internet is a long journey, with many stops along the way. Daniel Markuson provides step-by-step guide on how to remove personal information from the internet:

1. Delete unused social media accounts as well as online shopping, dating, and other profiles. Deactivating your account doesn’t erase you from the social network but hides your profile from friends and searches. However, if you’re serious about quitting, you can choose to permanently delete your profile together with all the information, saved articles, pictures, orders and messages.
2. Remove your information directly from websites. Deleting accounts is relatively easy, but there’s plenty more to do. The next step is to start auditing and cleaning up any websites that host your information. Start by making a list of all the sites you remember actively engaging with (creating logins, leaving comments, replying to forum posts, and so on).
3. Opt-out of the data brokers. Scraping the internet for people’s personal data and selling it is a lucrative industry now. There are two ways to approach this: manual and automated. You can start manually opting out of the data brokers, one by one or you can also use services like DeleteMe, that let you opt out of data brokers automatically.
4. Remove unwanted search results. Fighting with Google may seem like an impossible task but actually, they already have the tools to help you wipe unwanted results from the web. For example, if someone exposes your sensitive data, Google has a process in place to remove that information from search results.
5. Deactivate your email accounts. This is one of the last steps in the process because you will need your email to complete the previous steps, especially when trying to delete accounts associated with your email address.

“Keeping your digital information in check is not just about information that you put online. Monitoring the passive data collection conducted by companies from you is important too”, Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy expert at NordVPN, adds.

How to avoid data collection in the future?

There is still plenty you can do to limit how much of your data is shared and spread online. Markuson recommends:
? Limit social media use. If privacy is your priority, social media is not your friend. The rise of biometric data scraping (some corporations build their facial recognition databases using images scraped from Facebook and Instagram) demonstrates that social media is a huge threat to personal privacy.
? Use privacy-focused browsers. Google Chrome may be the biggest browser on the market, but it’s not the only option. Browsers like Brave and DuckDuckGo offer a more private browsing experience, blocking ads and trackers.
? Use a VPN. A VPN encrypts your browsing data and masks your IP, so companies can’t spy on your data if you don’t want them to. While bad internet habits can still get you in trouble, a VPN goes a long way to keeping your internet activity private and secure.


See previous articles

    

See next articles


Your podcast Here

New, you can have your Podcast here. Contact us for more information ask:
Marc Brami
Phone: +33 1 40 92 05 55
Mail: ipsimp@free.fr

All new podcasts