Delete Your Old Accounts!
Delete!
✨ This month, buy a checklist of simple privacy tips for $7 over on Ko-fi. Purchasing the checklist is a great way to start taking back your privacy and supporting my work!
If you have any accounts you no longer use, you need to delete them. Deleting old accounts means your data is no longer hosted by those services, and they cannot continue to collect, sell, or share it. This also cleans up your digital footprint, which contains all your passive and active online activity. Additionally, deletion can act as protection from data breaches, which seem to happen every damn day.
However, trying to find how to delete your accounts can be difficult. Many services deliberately hide that information because they want to make it difficult and hope that you give up. Luckily, I found an awesome resource that will make it easier to delete those old accounts.
JustDeleteMe (justdeleteme.xyz) is an open source “directory of direct links to delete your account from web services.” As the name suggests, it’s a directory that provides you information and direct links to delete your account from whichever web service you need. Also, this site color codes each service listed in terms of difficulty: green (easy), yellow (medium), red (hard), purple (needing to be in a location that respects privacy rights), and black (cannot be deleted). Now you know how to say adiós to Facebook, X, Adobe, or ChatGPT!
If you are having trouble of finding all of your old accounts, then you should read this article here that I saw from this Mastodon post. In a short summary, you will need to do some digging around to find the accounts you no longer want.
Feel free to share your experience or any information on deleting old accounts in the comments.
Until Next Time,
Monique 🔏
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Additional Reading:
Has anyone ever used this service? The .xyz has me a bit skeptical.
Been trying to do this but there are SO many websites that make it impossible. :(