Hi! We tend to spend a lot of time on the Internet. As a result, the large corporations that exist today know a lot about us. That’s why they offer you such accurate services when we are looking for something. It is certainly something we would like to limit. If you want to do so, today we will know 5 ways to erase your traces on the Internet. The big guys like Amazon, Facebook or Google, among others, know a lot about us through what we see online. In this way, they learn a lot of data, such as our likes and dislikes. They also know what we have searched for in the last few days, what we have discarded, etc. All this data is used by different companies to offer us just what we are looking for. Even to make us see that something is just what we want.
Data management companies
It is clear that data collection is a business. And a profitable one at that. Consequently, there are many companies in the world that do it. This data is central to the business strategy of many of the companies operating on the Internet. In fact, they rely on it to introduce changes to the very structure of their business. In this way, they can offer their potential customers the products or advertising most in line with what they are looking for.
These companies collect information. It can be our name, address, date of birth and even our online habits. With this in mind, they look at social networks or shopping. As you can imagine, this internet data is invaluable for any company that wants to sell anything. Think about it! Knowing what your customers are like and what to do to get them to notice your product is priceless.
There are some of these companies that are internationally famous such as Acxiom, Oracle or Epsilon, among others. It is possible to check several of them in this database. It is managed by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization. Users in Europe are currently protected by the General Data Protection Regulation. In addition, YourDigitalRights has created opt-out forms for 10 of the largest data brokers currently existing.
Google Results
It is certainly impossible to change the way Google displays search results. However, we can take steps to ensure that at least the data is up-to-date. That is, information from 10 years ago should not be displayed as current. It is certainly something that can be extremely detrimental to a user, in addition to not making sense. If our data appears on a website, and it is not up-to-date, you can request that page to delete all that information. From then on, Google itself will update this data. Especially when the changes are significantly different from the versions previously indexed.
Google itself deletes data that is harmful to us such as photos, fake pornography, financial data, medical data, private IDs. In addition to doxing or not allowed photos of children. For more information about this, we can go to the company’s help.
Delete old accounts
Look, the Internet has been with us for a long time now. Older users may have plenty of outdated accounts on sites that either don’t exist or don’t exist at all. Or we have simply forgotten about them, or they have merged with others. Searching for these old sites and records is a task that will take hours, days, or even months. In reality there are many and, worst of all, is that many of them we do not even know where to look for.
The first thing we can do is to go through the email accounts that we remember, seeing if we can go through them and delete them. We can also use websites like Justdelete.me. In fact, it contains a list with links to delete many websites and emails. If we do not remember more places where we have entered, we can choose to see the passwords saved in our browser. This way we can see if we can remember any other place where we may have an old account to delete.
We should also look up our name online and combine it with other personal information, for example, email address or where we live, to see what information or records come up.
Clear digital history
It is highly recommended to massively clean up old accounts and thus have our digital history lighter and lighter. However, we warn you that this will not be a simple process. For example, if we have old Gmail accounts, we can always delete everything in bulk using the search command olden:than: Then just add the time we want (1 year, 10 months or 5 minutes, as we see fit).
On Twitter, it is much more complicated, although we can use websites such as Tweet Deleter (paid) or TweetDelete to delete old tweets in bulk. Another option is to delete the Twitter account completely, especially if it is not the one we are currently using.
If we want to do the same on Facebook, we must go to Settings and Privacy, then to Activity Log and then select the type of activity we would like to delete. For example, from own publications to photos in which we are tagged. Although we have the same option as Twitter, i.e., we can directly delete the account.
For the rest of the platforms we must look in each one of them where we can do to delete everything we have in them that is old. Or simply delete the account so that there are no errors of any kind. Obviously, if the accounts are old and are not the ones we currently use, our advice is to delete them. That way, we make sure that there is nothing that can happen to us.
Legally
The last option we have is to erase our digital fingerprints using the legal means at our disposal. In this sense we will have to get advice from lawyers specialized in this subject and see what possibilities we have. Obviously, we can request the removal from the network of any type of information harmful to us. For example, unauthorized photos or any type of content that may damage our image and honor.
There are services such as DeleteMe that will attempt to delete all data held by data collection companies that sell your information.
However, this can also be done by normal legal means, i.e. through a lawsuit.
As you have been able to read, disappearing from the network is more complicated than it might seem at first. Especially for those who have been registered for many years. In fact, many places where they were registered have disappeared or have been merged into others. However, we can counter this with this 5 ways to erase your traces on the Internet. Bye!
