How to Erase Those Old, Embarrassing Online Accounts
We use our emails, phone numbers, and addresses to sign up for EVERYTHING online. Sometimes we make accounts for things once because we want to enter a giveaway for a much-needed vacay, or because we saw something on a random website that we absolutely HAD to have. And unless you’re super duper insanely organized with a spreadsheet of all your online accounts, it can be really hard to keep track of everything.
Or, it used to be.
Meet deseat.me, an online tool that finds your accounts and lets you get rid of them. All you need to do is sign in with a Google account, and the site will compile a list of everything you’ve created an account for, complete with links that will take you to the respective accounts’ delete pages.
This tool will catch pretty much every account you’ve ever made (and haven’t yet deleted). Amazing, right? This way, you won’t get random newsletters for accounts you don’t even remember creating, and hopefully you’ll get less spam too, since fewer sites will have your info.
If you want to have a more blanket erasure, head over to myactivity.google.com. From there you can delete your Google searches, things you watched on YouTube, Maps searches, etc. You can delete by topic, product, or date, and it will delete stuff off all the devices connected to your Google account. One of the biggest bonuses from doing this is that a lot of those online ads that seem a little too targeted can’t use the info you’ve deleted to tailor ads to you anymore.
Life is SO much easier when things are a one-stop shop, especially when it comes to managing your online presence. If you keep up with these two tools, say biweekly or even monthly, your online experience will feel a lot cleaner, a lot less cluttered, and a lot less creepy.
How do you keep your online experience running smoothly? Tell us @BritandCo!
(Photos via deseat.me, Google + Getty)