You have spent years online, and you have done a lot. You’ve opened up a variety of online accounts, you probably have multiple email addresses (some of which you might not even use much anymore), and you have also likely set up at least one social media profile. All of these things have created what’s known as your online presence.
But what if you want to clear it away now? Maybe you want more privacy and you want to make it harder for people to find personal information about you. Whatever your reasons are, there are ways that you can reduce your online presence, and we outline a few steps below to help you.
How Much Are People Search Websites Revealing About You?
Let’s start with people search websites. These are websites where you can type in someone’s name to find information about them, such as where they live, who their relatives are, where they lived in the past, what their phone numbers are, and more. Some of these sites even let you pay to run a background check on someone to find out if they have any criminal records, and to access other details that are not available for free.
If your goal is to clear your online presence, you will certainly want to have your information taken down from these types of websites. Unfortunately, this can take time because there are so many of them. That’s right, Whitepages isn’t the only people search website out there! So, even though you can quickly move through the Whitepages opt out instructions, your work isn’t done.
Been Verified is another popular people search site because it can provide you with a lot of information on just about anyone. So, head to the Been Verified opt out instructions too when you are ready to wipe your online presence clean.
And don’t forget that there are still others out there, such as Truth Finder. Like other people search sites, there are Truth Finder opt out instructions that you can use to request the removal of your information, so rest assured that you can gain control over your personal details with a few easy steps.
Delete All Emails and Accounts
To remove your online presence, you need to get rid of any accounts that are associated with your name, and this includes email accounts.
Start by going to each of the social media accounts that you’ve created over the years. Figure out how to totally remove those pages so that they no longer exist. In the same way that you went through the instructions on people search sites, you can follow simple steps to deactivate your social media accounts.
Don’t forget to think about various online shopping accounts, forum accounts, gaming platform accounts, etc. that you set up over the years. You will want to delete these as well.
When you have deleted all of your accounts, you can then delete your email addresses. This should be the last step because you might need those email addresses to be active in order to work through deleting all of the accounts that are associated with them.
As you can see, there are several steps involved in clearing your online presence, but if you’re serious about doing this, it will be worth all of the time and effort that is involved.
