Purging forgotten online accounts: is it worth it?
Purging forgotten online accounts: is it worth it?
Internet is full of forgotten accounts on social networks, dating apps and several shopping sites used once or twice. Of course, you must remove all unused logins and passwords. And eat your vegetables. And go to the gym.
But is it possible to eliminate your zombie tracks online or is it worth spending time?
Earlier this month, a little-used social network notified its few users that it will soon be closed. No, not Google Plus; that happened five days later, after the disclosure of an error that exposed data on half a million people. The previous closure involved Path, created by a former Facebook employee in 2010 as an alternative to Facebook. Then he is sending you monthly emails to remind you that this brave but little-known social network still exists in some way.
It may not seem like a big problem to have these persistent accounts. But with piracy on the news constantly, including a breach affecting 50 million Facebook accounts, you may not want all the data to remain on the network.
You may not have an option if it is a service that you use regularly. But for those you no longer use, consider a purge. In addition, it may feel good to put your life in order online, as does the organization of a closet.
Take out dating apps like Tinder, long after you've found a stable partner or have given up on finding one. You may have deleted Tinder from your phone, but the ghost of your Tinder account is still out there, just not getting any match, since Tinder shows only "active" users with possible partners.
Or consider Yahoo. Long after many people stopped using it, Yahoo in 2016 suffered the biggest trick publicly disclosed in history, exposing the names, email addresses, birth dates and other information of 3 billion active and inactive accounts. This type of information is a gold mine for malicious actors who seek to steal identities and gain access to financial accounts.
The problem is that cleaning your digital past is not easy.
On the one hand, finding all the old accounts can be a pain. For some of us, it may not even be possible to remember all the dating sites and all the possible Twitter that never existed, not to mention the shopping sites or events that bought something and those that were forgotten.
Then, you will need to find out which of your many email accounts used to log into a service, then recover passwords and answer annoying security questions, assuming you even remember which was your favorite movie or fruit at that time. Only then could you discover that you can not even delete your account. Yahoo, for example, did not allow users to delete accounts or change personally identifiable information they shared, such as their birthday, until they were pressured to do so after the violation.
Even without these obstacles, real life gets in the way. There are probably good reasons why you have not yet organized your closet.
Perhaps a better approach is to focus on the most sensitive accounts. It may not matter that a news site still has its login, if it never gave you a credit card or other personal information (of course, if you reused your bank password you could be at risk).
Rich Mogull, executive director of data security firm Securosis, said people should think about what information they provided to services they no longer use and if that information could be harmful if private posts and messages are made public without realizing it.
Dating sites, in particular, can be a treasure trove of potentially damaging information. Once you are in a relationship, delete those accounts.
Said Theresa Payton, who runs the security consulting firm Fortalice Solutions and served under President George W. Bush as White House. information chief
To get started, visit haveibeenpwned.com. This popular tool allows you to enter your email addresses and verify if you have engaged in a data breach. Ideally, the attacked company should have already notified you, but that is not guaranteed. Change passwords and close accounts that you do not need.
You can also check out justdeleteme.xyx, which Payton says could help navigate the "complexities of saying goodbye." The site has a list of common and obscure services. Reviewing it may remind you of some of the services you have used in the previous days. Click on a service for details on how to delete your account.
You may discover that some services simply do not let you go. That could be an oversight of a startup that prioritizes other features on a removal tool. Or, it could be intentional to get users to come back. There's not much I can do beyond eliminating as many publications, photos and other personal information as I can.
What to do with the stories of people who have died is another story. That said, Grim Reaper's perspective, and the kind of information about you that might be exposed after you've thrown this deadly coil, could be the motivation you need to clean up your online trail.
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Find Barbara Ortutay on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay
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