Useful tips
Maybe it's time to “reset” and start over. Or maybe modern life, in which any stranger can learn a lot about us if he wants to, is not quite suitable for people? Or maybe you want to run away from a few unworthy individuals.
For some reason, you decide to burn your old life, cut off all connections, and remove your online presence.
Your journey will be difficult but not impossible. Here's what algorithm of action you can follow.
How to leave the Internet
Disguise your steps
Before you start deleting all your accounts, you should know that even if you remove yourself from all public profiles and erase all email addresses, you're still after leave a digital footprint on the Internet if you don't take certain steps. At the very least, this is using TOR to mask your browser history and PGP to protect your messages.
TOR
TOR (The Onion Router) appeared not so long ago. Originally conceived by the US Navy as a way to safely spread dissidents in repressive countries, it has become a secret network on the web known as the DarkWeb. DarkWeb and its content provide enough information and functions for completely independent practical use by an ordinary user.
TOR works so that you can make your online history completely anonymous. You can work to break down your internet traffic across different cities with the help of various volunteers around the world.
TOR has recently got its own Internet browser, so it's now particularly easy to use. All you have to do is install it and run it, and it will be almost impossible to track your actions.
Read also: Experts: The Internet makes us smarter and dumber
There's one caveat: by installing TOR on your home computer, you're allowing very smart and advanced hackers to learn all about you. For additional security, install TOR on a USB drive, and then run it on your computer or in an Internet cafe, from where you can't directly track your address.
PGP
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is a decent way to ensure your messages are sent securely. This is a good method if you want to go unnoticed online. Unlike TOR, PGP isn't what you'd call user-friendly. In order to use PGP, you need to download the program. There are many such programs, one of the most successful is Gpg4Win.
Here are the main steps:
1. Download Gpg4Win and install it. During installation, be sure to select a component named GPA.
2. After installing PGP, open GNU Privacy Assistant — Key Manager and select “New Key” from the “Keys” menu.
3. Create your own key and be sure to back it up. Save it to a USB stick (the file will be with the.asc extension, but it will open in notepad). Everything between the phrases BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- and -END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK- is your public key.
Read also: The Internet destroys the brain as much as alcohol and drugs
4. If you want to chat with someone, share your public key with them first. Then open GNU Privacy Assistant – Clipboard, enter a text message and encrypt it with a key. Send an encrypted message as usual using email.
5. To receive an encrypted message, you first need to get the sender's key. Go to GNU Privacy Assistant – Keyboard, open the Keys menu and click Import Keys. To decrypt the message, go back to GNU Privacy Assistant – Clipboard, paste the encrypted message into the text box, then click Decrypt and select the sender's public key.
The above two steps are not a 100% guarantee of safety. If you misconfigure TOR or share your code rather than your public key, you'll be blocked or hacked. Use these tools properly.
Disappear from the web
Below we'll talk about the next steps.
Accounts in different apps
Here are statistics that will blow your mind. According to security firm Dashlane, the average European has 130 registered accounts per email address. Your real life identity is linked to too many accounts, and if you want to remove all your information from the web, you'll have to work with them all.
The good news is that you have several tools at your disposal beyond your memory that can help you. The first tool is your inbox. Most sites send you a welcome email when you sign up.
Usually, a welcome email uses common phrases that are used by all sites. You can try searching for key phrases in your mailbox, and what you find may surprise you. If you're storing old passwords in your browser, this is another way to search.
In Chrome, find “Settings” in the upper right corner of the screen, scroll down to the bottom to the “Advanced Settings” menu item and click on it. Keep scrolling until you find the Passwords & Forms box and click Manage Passwords.
With these steps, you'll see a list of all the sites you've signed up for, some of which you might not remember. You can even view passwords on these services by clicking on black dots and entering your computer's master password.
Read also: “Get off the Internet! I need to call right away!” and other horrors of the ancient Internet
There are also app permissions. Each person has several services they use regularly that are linked to their Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Amazon, etc. You don't have a unique name on these services users, but services use, for example, Facebook for identification.
What happens if you first delete your Facebook account, for example, and then start disabling apps? Many of your accounts will simply continue to exist while blocking you when you try to sign in. Therefore, social media accounts should be the last thing to delete. Many of them first deactivate your page and delete it after a certain period of time.
Fortunately, there is a tool that will clean up these apps. It's called My Permissions and allows users to find any app or site that's linked to your social media accounts. You don't even need to create a new account to use this tool, as it's immediately installed in your browser as a plug-in.
After all, you've got Google. If you're like most people, you've probably signed up for different services using the same nickname. Ask the search engine it. For reliability, use several search engines to find everything for sure.
Also read: The 10 craziest Internet calls to your body
Once you've found everything and listed all accounts, proceed to delete them. For some services, the process of deleting an account is very convenient and quick, while deleting others may require a conversation with the site administrator. This is where PGP comes in handy. Once you delete all accounts, you can move on to cracking down on the main centers of life on the Internet.
How to leave social media
Social media accounts
After you've deleted your accounts on various services, it's time for heavy artillery — social media. There's good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you can completely remove your presence from mainstream social media. The bad news is that social media platform developers have done everything possible to make it very difficult for the average user to figure this out.
Lucky for you, you're reading this guide. The process of deactivating a Facebook account takes place from the “Security” menu. From there, you can deactivate your account, but to completely delete your account, you'll need to contact a Facebook support representative.
On Twitter, the process of deleting your account is a little easier. At the bottom of the account settings page, there is a “delete my account” box. The only condition for confirming deletion is to enter your password.
Deleting your profile from VKontakte is easy. To do this, you just need to go to “My Settings”, find the first section called “General” there, scroll to the end of the settings page, where you will see “You can delete your page”.
Tumblr is estimated to have 300 million users. Most of them are teenagers and young people in their early 20s. If you are one of them, then you will be able to leave this social network painlessly.
Simply click on your account icon (the face-shaped figure in the upper right corner), select the bottom of the page and click “delete my account”. You'll be asked to enter your username and password, and you'll be slightly encouraged to stay.
Read also: 10 ways social media is affecting our mental health
Finally, there's LinkedIn. You can delete your account from here by going to the “Privacy and Settings” menu, which in turn can be found in the floating profile menu on the right side of the screen. There you'll find 'Account' at the bottom of the tabs. In the “Useful links” section, you will find the “Delete your account” button.
How to disappear from the web
Take control of your information
After you have made a list and started deleting your accounts from various services and social networks, you will probably find resources on the way to disappearing from the Internet that without Battles won't want to give you your account. Over time, there are fewer and fewer such sites and services, because human rights defenders defend the rights of ordinary people, but they still exist.
Even communication with customer service may not produce results, so while everything is still under your control, change the information. Create a fake name, a new email address, a different city, a date of birth, a new bio. Be creative, don't use details from your personal life.
During these changes, be sure to use TOR, as well as a computer that can't be tracked while you're setting up your new data. Otherwise, your made-up story is bound to lead to the real one.
Get off the internet
Change your phone number
If you're serious about disappearing from the web, changing your phone number is likely to be one of the first steps you'll take. People will still be able to call this number if it's listed on different services, so you need to take a few steps to make sure you're anonymous.
1) Call your mobile operator to make sure your new number is unregistered.
2) Contact a service to remove your number from the telemarketing companies' database so they can't call you.
Read also: Is it possible to destroy the Internet?
3) Credit companies also have access to your phone number by default. Contact them to make sure they keep your number anonymous.
Time is important in this matter. Be sure to plan ahead, because your phone number won't disappear from everywhere in one day.
Delete your email
An email address is one of your identities that tells you who you are. This should be done last, because deleting mail ahead of time will take you much longer to delete different accounts. Therefore, first make sure that you delete most of your traces from the Internet and only then do the last blow.
For Gmail, there's an “Account” in the upper right corner of the screen. There, in the “Account Settings” sub-item, you will find “Delete account”. It's the same procedure in Microsoft Outlook. Go to outlook.com, go to the account settings tab and find the delete button. A similar algorithm of actions with Hotmail, which is now owned by Microsoft.
Final touches
The internet has a good memory. You may have erased all traces of your presence, but sometimes things can pop up like the ocean throwing bottles and driftwood ashore. The only thing you can do in these situations is to be vigilant.
Read also: Internet addiction is a genetic mutation
Search periodically, once a week, or at least once a month to make sure the situation is the same as you left it. If you decide to build a new life online, make sure before you start that you can delete everything as easily as you can create it.