Easy Way to Delete Yourself from the Internet

Easy Way to Delete Yourself from the Internet

In 2016 the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council) passed a resolution against countries trying to restrict their citizen's Internet access. Although the resolution was non-binding, it is a step further towards having Internet access as a human right, affording an individual the same rights online as they should expect in the physical world. However, a further consideration should be made for those who don't want to have an online presence, especially if this stems from issues like cyber bullying or right to privacy. There are even companies who will charge a lot of money to either find ways to remove you or to change your SEO positioning. There may be an alternative suitable for you, so keep reading OneHowTo.com to know the Easy Way to Delete Yourself from the Internet.

How Connected Are We?

When the Internet as we know it today was in its early stages in the 1990's, many people were inconsiderate of the repercussions of linking all your personal information to a global network, too busy trying to connect rather than thinking how to delete yourself from the Internet. This is quite understandable as it was, and still is, a very difficult place to navigate, even if we discount those who are online actively trying to defraud you. There also weren't as many helpful places on the Internet to aid this difficult navigation. A lot of services offered online require some sort of registration or connection to another account to access. Just look at the amount of services which allow you to access them through your Facebook or Google+ accounts or at the very minimum using an email address.

All of these access points lead to a trail where your online presence can be monitored, your interests filed away and used for advertising and your private information stored on databases and server farms across the world. Everything from playing a game to buying underwear online will be monitored and many sites want you to share your activity through social media to help improve their online presence. This means if you want to delete yourself form the Internet and this digital entanglement, it can be a particularly difficult task.

Manually Delete Yourself from the Internet

Companies live and die by the amount of users who are on their site, whether active users or not. These provide information for the metrics which judge how viable a company is and therefore how valuable it is to its share holders. This means that they will not encourage you to stop using their service and it can often be difficult to either delete an account or unsubscribe from them. Perhaps this is due to confusing dialogue on their interface or even by hiding the means to unsubscribe or delete in the small print of the sitemap. Either way, the best way to delete yourself from the Internet has been to manually go into all of your accounts and delete them.

However, just because you have deleted your account, doesn't necessarily mean that you have deleted all your information related to it. Many services will only allow you to deactivate your account rather than a full delete from the Internet, so you many have to manually strip your information away. For example, if you have created a personal webpage you will have to delete all of your personal information, blog posts and pictures and create dead links. The same will go for social media, but there is the added difficulty of being part of other people's online content. This may require some real world communication where you speak to friends about wanting your presence deleted. This can be particularly difficult when you consider ex-employers or organizations you have been involved with and things can get both messy and confusing.

Easy Way to Deleted Yourself from the Internet

Even just remembering all of the accounts and services you have created or joined in the past can be difficult, so much so that even trying to scour through that overcrowded email inbox will be too great of an undertaking. The website DeseatMe is providing a way to get around this problem by allowing you to enter in your email address and see all the services you have accessed and accounts you have created. From then you can choose which ones you'll want to delete and which you'll want to keep. In this way it might be used not to actually delete yourself from the Internet or delete your online presence, but merely clean it up. You might even discover services you have forgotten about and will want to re-engage with.

Unfortunately it is in the beta stages, so you can only use it with Gmail accounts. If you have used other addresses, you will have to adopt the manual approach discussed before. To help you with this, a database has been created to help you find out which ones you should consider.

Should You Delete Yourself from the Internet?

Before you make the bold step of deciding to completely delete yourself and your online presence, you will need to give it some real consideration. Increasing your online presence is something many people put a lot of time, effort and money into and for good reason. As so much industry is becoming digitized, many careers and opportunities require not only background information from your online presence, but also use it as a category for assessing your suitability for the role. Social media is so-called because it connects us to family and friends and, whether you agree with it or not, it is the method by which many people communicate. Not being part of it if you delete yourself form the Internet may lead to being ostracized.

If you want to know more about how to delete yourself form the Internet or security online in general, take a look at these articles on How to Know What People See on my Facebook Profile and How to Make My Profile on Instagram Private.

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