TECH4GOOD
The ultra-connected world we are in today may have given us comfort and convenience, but it has also allowed many online sites to gather much information about us. Are you not bothered that your address, contact details, age, and online activities are out there? We are among the almost four billion internet users today who are leaving behind a trail of personal data that anyone can easily access. So much personal data is floating publicly on the internet today.
Do you want to cover your tracks or escape the internet because you are concerned about your privacy, security, and reputation? While online infamy thrills some, it can significantly burden most of us. Therefore, deleting yourself from the internet can be a liberating option to give you peace of mind.
Deleting oneself from the internet removes personal information from online sites, services, and searches. One can opt out of specific websites that are notorious for collecting personal data or use paid removal services to do the cleaning.
The primary sources of the issue are online companies called data brokers, who collect and aggregate personal information such as name, address, and birthday and often sell it to other organizations. The danger lies when these data are leveraged for various scams. Despite the threat, many people do not care about it. Some people, however, are careful, knowing that it can lead to problems such as online harassment, identity theft, and stalking. With the emergence of AI, the more information we have out there, the easier it will be for the bad guys to create our deepfakes.
How do you go about making the internet forget about you? There are many ways to limit (but not totally eliminate) the amount of personal information on the internet. If you are really serious about doing it, you can start by deleting or deactivating your website, social media, e-commerce websites and services, email, and gaming accounts. Remove yourselves from forums and online communities, and opt out of data brokers and search sites. Try searching for yourself on search engines and remove whatever information or links you see there about you.
Google recently came out with a tool that allows users to request the removal of search results that indicate their contact information. The tool may not be able to erase anyone’s contact information from the web, but it is definitely a concrete step toward mitigating the misuse of personal information. Google has become stricter in allowing the posting of personal data that creates significant threats of identity theft and financial scams, including non-consensual explicit or intimate personal images, involuntary fake pornography,and images of minors.
The above approaches can be time-consuming and will require a lot of effort. It also does not guarantee that those data will not reappear after some time. You may need to repeat the process occasionally to ensure it stays out of everyone’s reach. Do not fully trust those “unsubscribe” buttons because you cannot be sure if your data has really been deleted from their files or that they have not sold it yet to others.
Another way to remove your personal information from various sites is to subscribe to paid services that can do it for you. A handful of these service providers can help you save time and effort cleaning up your personal internet data. Their effectiveness can be hard to assess, though, primarily because much personal information is searchable online. Some can only guarantee a removal success rate of about 70 percent per user.
Aside from safeguarding your identity, increasing general privacy, and addressing your social media and fear of missing out (FOMO) addictions, deleting your blogs, comments, and photos online can go a long way in cleaning up your online image (subject of my next column). You should erase any embarrassing, inappropriate, or outdated content that might harm your reputation and career and avoid being judged by others based on your online presence.
Please note that there is really no such thing as completely deleting yourself from the internet. Just like toothpaste when it is out of the tube, once you enter cyberspace, you stay there. You can delete information, but that does not mean it has totally evaporated from the internet.
Deleting yourself from the internet can be tedious, but it has its rewards: more privacy, security, peace of mind, and freedom from online distractions and pressures. But it is hard to imagine a world without a digital footprint today: no social media profiles, email accounts, and unsearchable. You also lose contact with friends and family, miss out on opportunities and information, or feel disconnected and isolated.
The choice is yours to make. Googling yourself now can be an excellent way to start. ([email protected])
(The author is an executive member of the National Innovation Council, lead convenor of the Alliance for Technology Innovators for the Nation (ATIN), vice president of the Analytics and AI Association of the Philippines, and vice president of UP System Information Technology Foundation.)