Go Delete Yourself From the Internet. Seriously, Here’s How.
Find your data, request removal…and repeat
By Nicole Nguyen, The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2025
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Plug your data into Google’s free tool—the company promises not to use it for any other purposes—and wait a few hours for the alerts to roll in.
Optery, which launched in 2021, has a budget-friendly $4-a-month plan covering more than 300 sites.
DeleteMe is the seasoned old-timer, with 14 years in the business. The service offers a yearly plan for $129. This makes sense—information can reappear after months.
Aura is a more complete solution, starting at $120 a year. In addition to removing you from people-search sites, it offers antivirus software and identity theft insurance.
Turn on Do Not Track on your phone, avoid posting publicly on social media, and mask your identity by using burner email addresses and phone numbers. You might even want to use a fake birthday—but you still have to remember it. [end quote]
The article didn’t mention … but it’s advisable to use the free annual credit report from the 3 credit agencies (Trans Union, Experian and Equifax).
Also freeze your credit reports. If you need to unfreeze one (which I did recently to get T-Mobile service) it only takes a few minutes to unfreeze, verify and re-freeze.
As for financial accounts… Fidelity’s security center allows every account to be individually frozen for electronic transfers. Again, it only takes a few minutes to unfreeze, do the transfer and re-freeze. Use two-factor authentication for all accounts.
How do I know punching my name/names + email/phone # etc into that google tool does not immediately report all my data to The Big HQ in the Sky? Handing them all the information they need but don’t have to track/come and get me? Just a thought
Of course it does…but they already know that stuff anyway. Bet on it!
I have a Fitbit watch which I bought because my cardiologist wanted me to wear a sensor in case I got atrial fibrillation. Fitbit is a Google subsidiary.
Last week, I downloaded months of data from Google to analyze how my heart is doing (during recovery from my 11/19/25 open-heart surgery). I was stunned to see that ONE DAY of pulse rate readings had 30,000 observations! Why in the world would Google want to store my pulse rate literally every second of the day? Plus blood oxygen, steps per minute, sleep data and many more? They know more about me than I know about myself. Multiply that by ALL the Fitbit users – it’s a mind-boggling amount of data.
You think that Google doesn’t already know your name and address?
Every time you do a Google search they save that data, too. A fascinating book was written about that.
When I had that $900,000 ACATs transfer theft last year, the Vanguard cybersecurity tech told me that at this point, everyone’s private data has been compromised several times over.
You’re just closing the barn door after the horse has fled.
@intercst please remind us again how that happened.
As a result of your experience I added security to my Fidelity accounts so that no money can be transferred out, not even to another Fidelity account I own. Is that enough protection?
I know. I was being facetious. I typed in my name and email almost immediatley just to see how good the thing worked. A few times over the years I signed up with Intellius or one of those places you can basically get a public record dosier on anybody. There was really nothing to go go on including on my self.
I am not concerned with name rank and serial number type stuff. Like you said, it’s been out there since the 1990’s. I occassionally do a search for every name & email I’ve ever used on the web even to post on places like this. Nothing or nothing of consequence ever comes up.
The only way I can get disappeared is if the big HQ knows and cares enough about me to acquire the records of every internet company I’ve ever had and every search engine I’ve ever used. That might be damaging depending on what they’re looking for and what they plan to do.
Basically the securities industry has set things up to allow them to transfer assets between firms without verifying the prior approval of the customer. It’s nuts.
Whether Fidelity’s safeguards supersede that, I don’t know. I would think that industry regulations come before any promise your broker has made to you.
I’ve started to get regular reports (looks like AI type of report) about my income/spending from my bank. They seem to know more about my finances than I do and I’m a retired Chartered Accountant!
I think that they have a good idea of what my income is although they do not state this.
I had a credit card with them that got into a muddle (missing card). Last year I had to reapply for another card and went to fill in the on-line form. The bank’s form was partly pre-populated with various information about me, including their estimate of my annual income which was very accurate! I was a bit surprised.
I have been with them for almost forty years and nearly all my transactions pass through the account. They must know how much I’ve saved/invested and know where it has gone. They could (or have) make a good guess of what its earning and have added this to my regular pension incomes. Frightening really.