Piles of comments, views, lies, hoaxes, and other craps that had been continuously fed on various websites has given many netizens enough reasons to think — “Should we erase our online presence completely?” Not only this, there are many-a-times that they log on to various websites with their Google, Facebook or Twitter accounts, and don’t remember where all they have left their traces.
Whether navigating Facebook, Google or Twitter, the fact that the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth, or fear of being hacked has become difficult for internet users to ignore.
Although, internet users do have the option to reduce their online presence via deleting their profile, posts, or even certain accounts, it still does not entirely ‘erase’ them from the internet. However, to ‘delete’ oneself entirely from websites and search engines, developers have found an absolute ‘delete button’ — a website service that can help you erase your online presence with just few clicks.
Two Sweden-based developers, named Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck have designed an internet deletion website called Deseat.me to ‘clean up your internet presence’.
However, the service can only help those users who sign-up and use online services using their Google credentials. Before starting its job to delete users’ online presence, the service requires email addresses and passwords, which helps it list out all the websites you may have ever signed up to, or have accounts for. It then confirms whether one would like to permanently delete them. The service will, at a time, list three websites, giving users an option to either ‘add the website to delete queue’ or ‘keep’. At the end, the service will list out all the websites added to the queue, displaying marked as delete and an option to delete the said details permanently.
“We match them with direct links to their delete page, and instructions on how to delete your account for good,” developers wrote on their website.
Keeping in my mind users’ privacy and data security, the website is built to run on the user’s computer, rather than their servers. “So basically the only thing you’re telling us is what accounts you want to delete. That’s it, and since we use Googles OAuth protocol, we don’t have access to any of your login information,” added the developers.
The only issue in the service provided by Deseat.me is that it has not yet managed to retrieve deletion information from many other websites, blogs and forums. Therefore, it will not work for smaller websites, but will be able to delete your presence from popular websites such as Facebook, Evernote or Twitter, where you are likely to have an account.
However, be absolutely sure, as erasing yourself from the internet could likely affect your ability to communicate with potential employers. Thus, we advise all the netizens to keep reading and exercising website’s updated privacy policies to continue with their online presence, but based on their choice
