4 tips from someone who tried (and failed) to disappear from the internet |
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| Miguel Porlan for NYT Wirecutter |
 | By Max Eddy Max is a writer at Wirecutter covering privacy, security, and software. He can still, despite his best efforts, be found online. |
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“I want to throw my phone into the ocean,” has become a common refrain among my friends. That saying, or some variation on it, is shorthand for lamenting what has become a fact of life: how our lives are inescapably entwined with the internet. Websites you’ve never heard of claiming to have your personal information for sale; social media sites that offer fewer and fewer social connections but more and more ads; and on and on.
As a privacy journalist, I have given all manner of advice for how to secure and obscure an online life. But I’d never undertaken a project that extends the idea of privacy to its logical conclusion: by disappearing completely.
But, alas, try as I might, it’s not actually possible to fully delete yourself from the internet. And even if you could, I found vanishing from the web would also mean cutting yourself off from the very thing that has allowed so many of us to stay connected to each other.
But with a little effort, it is possible to take back some control of your online life, and remove what you don’t want out there. It’s not as dramatic or cathartic as drowning a smartphone, but it can help.
Here are four steps to declutter your internet existence:
- Use a data removal service to make your personal information harder to find. Data brokers advertise your address, phone number, or other personal information in search engine results — and they don’t always make it easy to remove. I tried several options to find the best data removal services, and I saw noticeably fewer brokers selling my data. Keep in mind that these services can be expensive, and you’ll need to keep the subscriptions active to keep your data from reappearing in the future.
- Save time by using automations to clean up your social media presence. There was no way I could possibly clear out all the posts from my X (formerly Twitter) account on my own. Instead, I used a free, open-source tool called Cyd that did the dirty work for me. This app tells X to remove each post as if you had clicked on them and chosen “Delete” from the menu. Poof. When it came to cleaning up Instagram, a homemade automation with Apple’s Automator app helped cut down the time it took to delete my posts. Using the app, I recorded myself deleting a post and then had it repeat that action hundreds of times.
- Break the connections between your accounts. Recycling your passwords is a bad idea, which is why we recommend using a password manager. But recycling usernames, user pictures, and email addresses can be bad, too: It can make it easier to connect accounts back to you. Break accounts apart by using more varied screen names and generic images for avatars. And to help keep your real email address private, services like Firefox Relay or Apple’s Hide My Email create unique, random email addresses that you can use to set up accounts that then forward to your real inbox.
- Delete accounts you don’t want, but keep some of them. If you don’t plan to use an online service anymore, delete the account, and move on with your life. But for social media platforms, it might be better to delete your content, lock down your account, and keep it alive but inactive. This makes it harder for scammers to impersonate you, and ensures your online reputation stays in your hands.
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My full quest to disappear from the internet→
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Your data appeared in a leak. Now what? |
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| Miguel Porlan for NYT Wirecutter |
Data breaches are now an unfortunate fact of modern life, and there’s not much you can do about preventing them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself afterwards. There are a few steps you can take — like changing your passwords and monitoring your bank accounts — to keep yourself as protected as possible.
Give yourself peace of mind→
One last thing: Turn this iPhone feature on now |
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| Michael Hession/NYT Wirecutter |
Our experts recommend turning on Stolen Device Protection, a feature in iPhones that makes it a lot more difficult for thieves to gain access to your most private information. After you enable it, your iPhone will require additional authentication for the user to access some information. It will also prevent certain changes if it detects that it isn’t at a trusted location, such as your house or your workplace.
“Stolen Device Protection makes it harder for thieves to use a stolen iPhone to ruin your life,” Max writes. “It might pose an inconvenience for you in some moments, but it’s still worth switching on.”
How to enable this feature→
Thanks for reading.
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