It’s tiring, isn’t it? Doing everything online, I mean. Everyday you log into services tailor-made for shopping, searching, sharing, watching, chatting, curating, reading, bragging – that’s a lot of places to keep your personal information, and no one could blame you if you wanted to try to pare down on those extraneous connections. I’d like nothing better myself sometimes.
A U.K.-based duo consisting of developer Robb Lewis and designer Ed Poole seem to understand that desire awfully well, and they teamed up to create what may be a truly indispensable resource. It’s called Justdelete.me, and as the name sort of implies, it’s a directory of links to pages where you can lay waste to your myriad online accounts.
It’s a deceptively simple resource. You’re greeted with a sizable grid that points you to a slew of popular web services that you probably use. More specifically, those links point you straight at the pages where you can deactivate all those pesky accounts… or at least where you can try. Thankfully, Lewis has done the due diligence to figure out which services can be disconnected from painlessly and which ones require you to (ugh) actually communicate with someone to get the job done.
A disconcerting number of sites and services fall into that latter category. Of the ones that Lewis has added, 10 won’t let you kill your account without first talking to a customer service rep, and 4 (Steam, Starbucks, and WordPress) don’t seem to let you delete your accounts at all. Of course, it’s in these companies’ best interests to keep the account deletion process as obtuse (one might say dark) as possible. The less progress you make on that front, the more likely you are to remain in their clutches.
As useful as the site can be for people looking to disconnect sans headaches, it’s far from being a complete compendium. Lewis notes on his blog that Justdelete.me is very much a work-in-progress – he’ll gladly accept suggestions for services that people think should be on the list, and here’s hoping this thing continues to pick up steam.
Source: TECH CRUNCH
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Don’t be misled. You can close, delete, and obliterate accounts. But your data persists forever. Just think of it as a book in which all your activities are recorded. You can close the book, store it in an archive, maybe shred it. But a copy of your activities will always exist somewhere.
CAN IT VANISH ME FROM THE WORLD?
#1: Well said. However, what many people forget is the other Book that’s been open since the beginning of time:
Ayin ro’eh, ozen shoma’as, vehakol besefer nichtavim.
A gut gembencht yahr to all Klal Yisroel.