How To Erase Yourself From The Internet: New Website ‘Cleans Up Your Digital Existence’ With Only A Few Clicks Of The Mouse

A new online service, called Deseat.me, offers to expunge your online existence with only a few clicks of the mouse. The service claims it can help you to erase your online footprint and “clean up your [digital] existence.”

According to Swedish developers Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck who created Deseat.me, the website offers you an opportunity to “clean up your internet presence” by deleting your online accounts, such as Facebook, Evernote, Dribble, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

All that you need to do when you use the Deseat.me deletion tool is sign in with your Google email address. The tool then scans the internet and lists all accounts you have created online with the address. This includes all online services, apps, websites and social media sites you signed up or subscribed to.

After listing the accounts, it provides a delete link to the unsubscribe page for each account and asks you which of the accounts you would like to delete or unsubscribe. This means that the service does not delete all of your accounts at once but grants you flexible control to decide which accounts or online subscriptions to keep and which to delete.

Once you have decided you want to delete an account all you need to do is click a few links and you’re rid of that part of your digital history.

But the developers warn that deleting all your online accounts does not necessarily mean that your entire online existence has been expunged. For instance, deleting your Facebook profile will not delete records of your shares and likes appearing on the profiles of your Facebook friends.

Several online services, including Google, offer a grace period in which users can change their minds and reactivate their accounts.

“We give you a list of all the accounts and services you have ever created an account for,” the programmers explain, according to the Daily Mail. “We match them with direct links to their delete page, and instructions on how to delete your account for good.”

The Swedish developers emphasize that they take users’ privacy very seriously. The service gains access to your online data using Google’s OAuth protocol. This means the website does not have access to your login information.

And as part of efforts to protect your privacy, the program runs only on your computer and not on their server.

“So basically the only thing you’re telling us is what accounts you want to delete,” the service providers explain, according to the Telegraph. “That’s it, and since we use Google’s OAuth protocol we don’t have access to any of your login information.”

But an obvious present limitation of the service is that it can only find online accounts created with Google email address. This means that the tool will miss old accounts, such as MySpace, that you may have signed up for with other email addresses, such as Hotmail.

But the service is being developed and upgraded to cover more online services and to retrieve more diverse account deletion information.

But it works currently with major websites and social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Dribble and LinkedIn.

The following is an outline of the steps you need to take to “erase yourself from the internet.”

1. Go to Deseat.me

2. Sign in with your Google email address [presently, the website works only with a Google email address].

3. After you have signed in with your Google email address the website scans the internet, lists all you online accounts and provides you with options to “delete,” “add to delete queue” or “keep.”

[Featured Image by Aodaodaodaod/Shutterstock]