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Home / Business

How to delete yourself from the internet

Daily Mail
25 Nov, 2016 11:00 PM2 mins to read

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A Swedish website is offering anyone the chance to erase their online footprint with the click of a button. Photo / 123RF
A Swedish website is offering anyone the chance to erase their online footprint with the click of a button. Photo / 123RF

A Swedish website is offering anyone the chance to erase their online footprint with the click of a button. Photo / 123RF

If you ever feel like online life is getting too much, there may be a solution.

A Swedish website is offering anyone the chance to erase their online footprint with the click of a button.

You simply have email address and password, and then they can remove any and all traces linked to that address.

The service, called Deseat.me, has been designed by Swedish programmers Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck.

By letting users sign in with Google, it seeks out all of the accounts a user has created online.

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Using Google's OAuth protocol to access users' data, it then provides them with delete links for each of their accounts, enabling the user to wipe the slate clean.

Examples given on the website include Facebook, Evernote and Dribble, but would include everything from YouTube to LinkedIn.

The site claims: 'We give you a list of all the accounts and services you have ever created an account for.

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'We match them with direct links to their delete page, and instructions on how to delete your account for good.'

The Swedish duo write: 'Basically the only thing you're telling us is what accounts you want to delete.

'That's it, and since we use Google's OAuth protocol we don't have access to any of your login information.'

However, for users with a lot of accounts it could take quite a few clicks to wipe out their online presence.

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Deseat.me are appears to be fairly limited at the moment.

It requires users to have a Google email address that is used for all of their online accounts.

This means that old MySpace accounts, for instance, will be missed.

Can you delete your online existence

Just because your accounts are gone, does not necessarily mean you will become a ghost online.
In the case of social media, while your profile may be deleted, there could still be records of your likes, shares and reposts in other people's profiles.
Many services, including Google, provide a grace period, where users can change their mind and reactivate an account.

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