A viral internet guide

A savvy tech expert’s Twitter thread on how one can delete
practically their entire digital footprint has gone viral.

As the tweeter, Liam, put it himelf, the thread “went
viral because the information is unmatched, accessible and [he] broke it down in layman terms so [anyone] could gloss over it in 30
– 60s of reading.“

It is compelling reading for anyone who is worried about the
threat of hackers, as well as the way their digital footprint is
being used to bombard them with targeted ads.

RELATED: HACKERS MAY BE ABLE TO USE
THE SENSORS ON YOUR PHONE TO GUESS YOUR PIN^[1]

A viral internet guide

The first tweet of Liam’s thread reads as
follows:

How to DELETE 99.9% of your digital
footprint from the internet [a thread]

The first step, he says, is to make a checklist of every email
account you have had over the past ten years.

“You’ll want to recover them if you’ve lost access, so
that you can access other websites you may have signed up to using
them,” Liam explains.

Locating and deleting old accounts

Liam’s brilliant step-by-step guide goes into detail on
each step of the process. After getting all of the old email
accounts together, internet users will want to delete old accounts
of forgotten services.

Step 2: Deleting old accounts from forgotten
services

Use the search function on your e-mail and look for phrases such
as “Sign up” or “Welcome”

Recover account and login into each service that pops up (that
you received a sign-up email) from

Step 2 of Liam’s guide has two extra tips attached to it:

a) Send an email request for a company to delete your account if
you can’t find a delete function in settings.

b) If possible, delete the content and messages from an account
before deleting the account itself, as these may be archived.

Verifying your online information is safe

How do you actually know if your information has been
compromised already? Liam includes this information in step 3.

Step 3: Checking if your information has
been compromised already.

Now you should have a list of all your usernames and all the
services, ranging from streaming services to e-mails.

You need to use something called boolean searches to properly
use Google to locate this info

Liam’s guide runs up to over 11 steps, all of which we recommend
reading on his thread^[5].

The subsequent steps include tips on knowing how to remove your
information from Google, stopping Google using your data, and using
burner accounts. We highly recommend anyone with even a slight
interest in data privacy read it.

Your data follows you around

As one tweeter replied to Liam:

Easier to change my identity, passport,
city, relatives & friends

The original poster countered, however, by saying a person’s
digital footprint would remain attached to them no matter where
they are.

Another responder suggested a certain government agency wouldn’t
be too happy about the thread:

the fbi after seeing this: pic.twitter.com/ZL98seYobe^[7]

All we know is that malicious cybersecurity attacks are
on the rise^[9], and it’s worth setting
aside some time to clean up those loose threads we all leave
dangling on unknown servers.