Wiping yourself from all searches, pages, and databases on the internet is time-consuming. It’s also likely impossible to clear every single digital footprint you’ve left online, but you can get close.
If you’re wondering how to erase yourself from the internet, here are some steps to take:
- Use Incogni to delete lots of online data at once.
- Round up all your old emails and unsubscribe from newsletters and online services.
- Close all messaging and social media accounts.
- Remove information from shopping and e-commerce accounts.
- Get rid of those forgotten accounts.
- Scrub your outdated information from Google.
- Submit a “right to be forgotten” request.
- Check for your information in data leaks.
- Go after data broker sites and companies to request for your data to be removed.
- Check internet archives and send deletion requests.
- Delete your email accounts.
There are also some ways to be more anonymous online. One of the best things to do so is to use a solid VPN, such as Surfshark. This VPN offers outstanding encryption to keep your data secure, and will hide your real IP to protect your online privacy.
Surfshark
We’ve compiled a full step-by-step guide on how to scrub yourself from the internet in our comprehensive guide below.
One of the questions I get asked often is “How do I remove myself from the internet?” Maybe you’re looking for a new job and worry about a potential employer finding an embarrassing picture or a regrettable tweet. Or perhaps you’re concerned about cyberstalking or harassment.
Whatever the reason may be, if you’re wondering how to erase yourself from the internet, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll tell you how to delete yourself from the internet in 11 steps.
Wondering how to scrub yourself from the internet as quickly and easily as possible? I recommend getting Incogni. This service will contact over 180 data brokers on your behalf and request for your information to be removed from their databases.
Why Delete Yourself From the Internet
There are several reasons why it may be handy to remove your online fingerprint. For example, employers often look around on social media to know who they’re dealing with before a new hire. They might even inspect the profiles of existing employees from time to time, especially if the company has a reputation to protect.
Moreover, I have to admit I’ve looked up plenty of people online after meeting them to find out a little more about what they do, if they have similar interests, if networking with them would be worthwhile in a professional sense, etc.
The point is that anyone with good or bad intentions can access your online information if you don’t protect this data or remove it altogether.
How to Erase Myself From the Internet in 11 Steps
Scrubbing yourself from the internet isn’t a process you can knock out overnight. Combing the internet and getting rid of your digital footprint is going to be a time-consuming effort. Some online platforms won’t delete your account for a month or so, either.
Don’t be afraid to bookmark this article and come back to complete the steps as you go along. With that out of the way, here’s how to remove yourself from the internet.
1. Use Incogni to delete lots of online data at once
I mentioned that erasing yourself from the internet isn’t that easy, but that’s mainly the case if you’re doing it all by yourself. Surfshark, one of my favorite VPN providers, has developed an outstanding tool to make the process much easier: Incogni.
If you sign up to Incogni, the service provider will send data removal requests to over 180 data brokers – the list is still growing. These requests are almost guaranteed to get a positive reply, since they rely on important privacy laws, such as the CCPA and the GDPR.
Data brokers gather huge amounts of data on you and other users, to sell this data to third parties, or otherwise make a profit. As you can imagine, this is a huge threat to your privacy, and can even lead to identity theft. This is why Incogni is such an invaluable service.
Do you want to get some more information about Incogni? Check out our in-depth Incogni review.
2. Round up your old emails and unsubscribe from newsletters and online services
If you want to remove information from the internet, you’ll first have to dig up any old email addresses and recover access to them. Since you’ll have to delete accounts and connections left and right, you’ll need those email addresses to do so.
How long have you been online? Do you remember the email you used to sign up for MySpace, Blogspot, or Tumblr? With those old email accounts, as well as the ones you’re currently using, you will be able to access and unsubscribe to all the websites, newsletters, and other online services you’ve signed up for over the years.
You’re going to need to get back into those accounts to remove your data. Plus, you’ll be able to see all the newsletters you’re subscribed to on old email addresses and wipe your name off those lists.
3. Close all messaging and social media accounts
It’s also worth considering closing your social media profiles and accounts. These are probably the biggest sources of information about you. As such, anyone trying to sneak into your virtual life will probably start with your socials.
I won’t go through the process of how to remove each of your social media accounts here. Instead, I’ve included plenty of handy instructional articles on how to delete different social media accounts below. These are tried and tested methods of our VPNOverview staff and contain everything you need to know.
- How to delete your Facebook account
- How to delete your Instagram
- How to deactivate or delete your LinkedIn
- Delete your Twitter account
- Permanently delete Reddit
- Remove your data from Snapchat forever
- Delete your Telegram account permanently
- How to delete your Tinder account
Don’t forget about your TikTok, WhatsApp, Skype, and your Facebook Messenger account if you have these. Of course, deleting all these accounts will be no easy feat and social media is just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the University of Illinois, the average American typically has between 70 and 150 online accounts that require a password. Just think about all the passing fads you signed up for when you were 15, and you’ll get a sense of the scope of this.
4. Remove information from shopping and e-commerce accounts
It might seem impossible to imagine life without Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or AliExpress. Even so, you’ll have to close those down as well if you want to completely delete yourself from the internet.
E-commerce, online shopping, and delivery sites offer plenty of opportunities to review, leave comments, and send online messages. Even if you’re not an avid product reviewer, your profile and name are likely floating around somewhere on a long-forgotten post.
This also means Uber Eats and DoorDash will have to go. Are you into traveling? Don’t forget to get rid of your Airbnb, Expedia, and Booking.com accounts as well.
To help you remember some sites you might have an account on, here’s a list of some of the most popular shopping, food delivery, and travel websites people tend to have accounts on.
| Category | Websites |
|---|---|
| Shopping | Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Etsy, Craigslist |
| Food Delivery | DoorDash, Deliveroo, Grubhub, Uber Eats |
| Travel | Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor |
We’ll show you how to close your account on some of these popular platforms below.
Deleting your account is permanent!
Remember, closing your account on an e-commerce or shopping platform is generally a permanent, irreversible action. Also, you’ll often lose access to any services that are associated with the platform you’re deleting your data from. This is the case with Amazon, for instance.
Delete your Amazon account
- Go to the Amazon account closure page and log into the account you want to delete.
- Read the warnings issued by Amazon. If you delete your account and data, you’ll completely lose access to your account on every version of the Amazon website. Moreover, you’ll lose access to all of the Amazon services you are subscribed to, such as Prime, Prime Video, Kindle, Audible, and others.
- Scroll all the way down and choose a reason for wanting to delete your account. You can also select “I don’t want to provide a reason.”
- Tick the box that reads “Yes, I want to permanently close my Amazon Account and delete my data.”
- Click on “Close My Account” and follow the steps on the screen to permanently delete your account.
Delete your DoorDash account
- Go to the DoorDash homepage.
- Go to “Account Settings.”
- Click on “Manage Account.”
- Select “Delete Account” and follow the on-screen steps.
Delete your Booking.com account
- Go to the Booking.com account deletion page and log into the account you want to delete.
- Click on “Yes, remove my account.”
- Go to the inbox of the email address you used to register your Booking.com account. Booking should send you an email. Click on the link in this message to confirm your account’s removal.
Remember it’s not just social media platforms and shopping sites that gather information on you. One of the biggest dangers to your online privacy is IP profiling. You can prevent this invasion of your privacy with a good VPN, such as Surfshark.
5. Get rid of forgotten accounts
Do not forget your old accounts when you’re looking for ways on how to erase yourself from the internet. When you’re going through your different email accounts, you can use the Search function to target keywords like “Sign up,” “Membership,” or even just “Welcome.” This will show you the emails you received when you signed up for various services.
Using these emails, you can go directly through their official websites to cancel your old online accounts or hunt down customer service agents and request they close your accounts. You might be shocked by all the services and sites you’ve signed up for over the years, with many of them logging your activity and data.
You also may want to look into some of your old favorite sites too. MySpace, for example, is still active, with all the old social media accounts still on there. If you type in your old profile link, it’ll still be there.
6. Scrub your outdated information from Google
Even after deleting accounts and cleaning house, there could still be various pages containing your information showing up on Google. There are a few ways to remove personal data from Google.
Google has a special request form to remove information from the internet, like your personally identifiable information (PII). However, this is sensitive data that could lead to identity theft, for example. This data includes the following:
- Social Security Numbers
- Bank account information
- Login credentials
- Personal addresses
- Phone numbers
- Signatures
- Other information that can be used for identity theft
Limitations of data deletion request
The request form is helpful, but in most cases, you’ll have to go to the source to scrub pages containing your personal information or photos. This might take some work.
Let’s say you Google your name and find an old interview you did with your university. The interview is unlikely to lead to identity theft, so Google won’t help. You’ll have to reach out to the university and request they remove the page themselves.
Even if Google grants your request, your details can still show up in cached Google search results. It could take a few days or even weeks for the search engine’s algorithms to pick up on all the changes you’ve made.
If you want to fast-track the process, you can use the Google Search Console. For this, you’ll have to go through each page URL or image that shows up on the search engine and request an update. Once submitted and cleared, the results should vanish.
Of course, it’s even better to make sure Google and other online services won’t be able to gather data on you in the first place. The best way to accomplish this is by not logging into any of your online accounts and using a good VPN, such as Surfshark, to prevent IP profiling.
7. Submit a ‘right to be forgotten’ request
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) first established the “right to be forgotten” in 2014. In short, individuals – this right generally doesn’t apply to organizations – can request from companies, including Google, to delete their data or delist it within the EU.
For such a request to be successful, it should meet a few important criteria. For instance, the information you want deleted cannot be in the public interest.
In case you submit a right-to-be-forgotten request to Google, a manual reviewer will go over your request. They will, among others, pay attention to the following factors:
- Your role in public life
- The information’s origin
- How old the content is
- The effect on Google’s users
- Whether the information is true
- Sensitive data
You can submit a right-to-be-forgotten request to Google using their form. If the reviewer decides your request is valid, Google will delist the search result in question in countries applying European data protection law.
8. Check for your information in data leaks
Another question I frequently get asked, is, “Can I check if any of my data has been compromised in data breaches and leaks?” It turns out you can! A great site for seeing how much of your information has been “pwned” (or compromised) is the site haveibeenpwned.com.
On this web page, you can enter your email address or phone number and see if it’s been exposed during cyberattacks, data breaches, and leaks. If it has, you can change or delete account names and passwords that might have been affected, rather than having to delete all your data.
Keep in mind that any accounts that aren’t included in your HaveIBeenPwned results, but do use the same usernames, emails, or passwords, might also be in danger.
Since hackers can gain access to your personal details, it’s crucial to choose secure passwords for all your online accounts. A good password should fulfill the following criteria:
- Length: Even if you only use English letters, every additional random character will make your password 26 times harder to crack with a brute force attack. Length is quite possibly the most important factor in creating strong passwords.
- Randomness: Never use your name, date of birth, or other personal information as your password. Rather, use a completely random combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
- Uniqueness: Choose a different password for each of your online accounts to mitigate the damage of a potential breach.
A great way – if you ask me and my goldfish memory, the only way – to accomplish the above is with a good password manager.
With a strong password manager, like 1Password, you can easily generate and store all of your passwords. Thanks to the provider’s end-to-end encryption, all your passwords will remain completely secured all the time.
9. Go after data broker sites and companies to request for your data to be deleted
Even after you’ve thought of every possible way regarding how to erase yourself from the internet and done all you can to nuke your accounts, your information may linger in data broker databases.
Third-party services can engage in tons of data collection — including IP addresses, type of device used, browser used, and location data (for mobile), among other data. Companies aggregate that information and sell it to data brokers for marketing and advertising purposes.
Fortunately for EU residents, the privacy-conscious GDPR rules have made it easier to request that your data be deleted and remove information from the internet that belongs to you. The same goes for Brazilians with the LGPD and Canadians under the PIPEDA. Below are some more countries that have data protection laws similar to the GDPR.
| Country | Law |
|---|---|
| Argentina | Personal Data Protection Act |
| Bahrain | Personal Data Protection Law |
| Brazil | General Data Protection Law |
| Canada | Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) |
| Israel | Data Security Regulations |
| Japan | Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) |
| Kenya | Data Protection Act |
| Mauritius | Data Protection Act |
| New Zealand | Privacy Act |
| Nigeria | Data Protection Regulations |
| Qatar | Law No. 13 |
| South Africa | Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act |
| South Korea | Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) 2011 |
| Turkey | Law on Protection of Personal Data No. 6698 |
| Uganda | Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 |
| Uraguay | Act on the Protection of Personal Data and Habeas Data Action |
If you’re interested in outsourcing the tedious process of chasing down data brokers, you should consider getting Incogni.
10. Check internet archives and send deletion requests
There are projects and sites, such as the Wayback Machine, that collect, save, and archive public web content for future generations to study.
The people behind the Wayback Machine probably never intended to log and store your personal information online. Nevertheless, they have likely done so one way or another since 2001, when their archives became publicly available.
If you’ve ever owned, operated, or published a website, its pages are likely logged on the site. Your old MySpace profile is probably on there as well. When I checked now-closed websites and old MySpace profiles, those appeared in searches on the Wayback Machine.
You can send requests by email to info@archive.org to have web pages removed, whether you own(ed) them or not. With old MySpace profiles, for example, you’d have to take this route.
To request takedowns of archived URLs and webpages that you own, you can also submit a DMCA takedown order, which is a copyright infringement notice. You can draw one up via the DMCA notice generator and attach it to an email sent to info@archive.org.
11. Delete your email account
I saved this step for last because you’ll need your email accounts to remove information from the internet that belongs to you. Once you feel like you’ve successfully cleared yourself from online searches and services, you can finally close your email accounts.
If you want to erase yourself from the internet, you’ll need to delete your Gmail account, Yahoo Mail, or whichever provider you’re using.
Of course, if you think you can’t quite make that leap yet, you can instead change your privacy settings on your Google account to minimize what Google can collect about you. This goes for any and all accounts you decide to keep.
How to Remove Personal Information From the Internet Automatically
Just like you might outsource that three-day plumbing job to someone who can knock it out of the park in a few hours, you can do the same for your internet presence.
Besides Incogni, you can use another provider we have extensively reviewed: DeleteMe. DeleteMe’s creators developed this program to remove all of your personal information from Google, as well as from data brokers.
While DeleteMe mostly operates automatically, the service also contains a human element to take back your data from even the most steadfast and hidden collectors.
You’ll still want to delete private accounts yourself, but these services will certainly take care of cleaning those hard-to-reach places.
Life After You Remove Your Online Information: Browsing the Web Anonymously
It’s tough to imagine a life completely offline. How would you perform everyday tasks at work? Banking and investment apps have moved online, and a huge part of our money is electronic.
Ditching the internet altogether is difficult, to say the least As such, you might want to take steps to protect your anonymity and privacy online. Here are the most important ones to get you started.
1. Always use a VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one of the most important privacy and security tools you should use. When you’re connected to an insecure public Wi-Fi connection — as is the case in most coffee shops, airports, and hotels — your personal data is more or less up for grabs.
Plus, if you want to stay anonymous, you’d want a VPN turned on at all times. This makes it impossible for the sites you visit to know (and store) your IP address.
A good VPN will hide your IP address by guiding your data traffic through one of the VPN’s servers. All the while, the VPN encrypts your data with military-grade security protocols, so no one can decipher it.
One of the very best and most secure VPNs you can use is Surfshark. Even better, this provider is also one of the most affordable VPNs around!
2. Use an anonymous email service
We’ve always liked ProtonMail for sending anonymous emails. It’s one of the world’s largest secure email service providers and has more than a million active users. It was developed by a team of scientists and has become the leader in secure email services.
3. Avoid Big Tech browsers and search engines
Google and Chrome are wildly popular for a reason. They make life easier and faster. However, they also collect massive amounts of data on their users. Luckily, there are plenty of privacy-conscious browsers and search engines.
Two of the best privacy-orientated browsers are Tor and Brave. If you’re looking for a good search engine that won’t collect your data, I recommend DuckDuckGo.
We’ve also compiled a list of the best Google alternatives to give you more privacy-minded options to replace every Google service.
How to Erase Yourself From the Internet
Getting yourself erased from online indexes and search engines will take some work and you probably won’t ever reach a perfect 100%. However, if you take the steps we’ve listed above, you should get pretty close.
Some services make the “clean-up process” a lot easier. If you’re wondering how to scrub yourself from the internet fast and hassle-free, I strongly recommend checking out Incogni. This service can get your data deleted from 180+ data brokers.
It will also be difficult to stay offline completely these days, so it’s important to take steps to protect your privacy after you’ve purged your online presence. Anonymous emails, browsers, and VPNs make the online experience much safer, more secure, and more private.
If you want to know more about how to enhance your online safety, check out the following articles:
- How to Browse the Internet Anonymously: Tips to Stay Private
- The Best Private Search Engines for Total Anonymity
- How to Call and Text Anonymously
Got questions about removing yourself from the internet? Click on any question below for an answer. Feel free to leave a question in the comments if you find there’s something we haven’t covered yet.
To remove yourself from the internet, take these steps:
- Delete all your accounts on social media, messaging apps and shopping, delivery, and travel platforms.
- Scrub outdated information from Google caches.
- Send opt-out requests to data collection agencies and brokers.
- Delete your email accounts.
To avoid being Googled, you’ve got to get yourself offline. Start with deleting social media apps and accounts, then move on to canceling other accounts and services that have public profiles.
Check out our article on how to remove personal information from Google search results for a full explanation.
To remove personal information from the internet, you’ll need to start by deleting social media and messaging accounts, as well as all apps that make information publicly available, such as dating and e-commerce apps. You’ll also need to send opt-out requests to data brokers and agencies.
