With Time and Money You May Be Able to Scrub That Web Content about You
January 25, 2022
What is posted on he Internet stays in the digital ether forever, but occasionally content can be deleted but only with a lot of work. AIM explains how your Internet breadcrumbs can be deleted in the article, “Online Tools That Help You Remove Your Digital Footprint.” A person’s contact information and interests is the lifeblood of growing businesses. According to the Mine privacy start-up after they surveyed 30,000 of its users, it was discovered that a user’s email was in 350 companies databases.
That sounds like a startling statistic, but emails are shared like people used to share cigarettes. Also mailing houses and phonebooks used to list and sell the same information. Back in analog paper days, people did not have GPSs strapped to their bodies at all times so it is alarming that we can be tracked at all times and everything we do is recorded. There are ways to combat data collection, such as using privacy browsers like Brace, Firefox, and Duck Duck Go:
“Firefox is a great alternative for web browsing for privacy with its ‘Enhanced Tracking Protection’ that automatically blocks online trackers. Similarly, Duck Duck Go does not track user activity and open tabs and your browsing history can be deleted with a tap. These also include a signal ‘Global Privacy Control’ that sends your “do not sell” preference directly to websites you visit.”
There are also data deletion services. Users can backtrack and ask companies to delete all of their personal data, but it is a tedious task. Instead there are companies users can hire to delete all their personal information. It is like those services that you can hire to remove you from physical junk mail lists.
It makes sense that startups would spring up that specialize in deleting personal information. The idea is genius for niche market in cyber security and some of the companies are: Delete Me, Mine, Data Privacy Manager, Ontrack, Rightly, and Privacy bot.
The bigger question is do these companies actually provide decent services or are they a bait and switch? Our take? Parts of Internet indexes are like lice in a college dorm.
Whitney Grace, January 25, 2022
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