If your
growing weariness of being constantly tethered to the internet has
become overwhelming, it might be time to scrub yourself from the social media sphere altogether. Here’s how you can become a ghost on the Internet, by tracking down and eliminating your digital past.
The Big Four
Before you go hunting down your old MySpace and Yahoo Fantasy Sports accounts, you should probably go ahead and nix your existence from the four largest social media sites
on the planet—Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn—seeing as how
they have the greatest reach and the most information on you. Luckily,
each service makes the self-destruct process fairly straightforward.
Facebook makes it very obvious how to deactivate your account; it’s under Account Settings > Security > Deactivate your account. Don’t be fooled! Deactivation isn’t deletion, and when you chose this option, Facebook holds on to all your bits and pieces juuuuussssssst in case you change your mind.
To truly nuke your account, you need to head to the Delete My Account page and click the big blue button.
That’s it, you’re officially off Facebook. The process might take up to
a fortnight to complete since the system has to scan the entirety of
itself making sure all data related to you—every tagged picture, like,
and mention—but when it’s gone, it’s all gone. The process is
irreversible.
Don’t worry, though; if you still want that treasure trove of pictures and updates living on your hard drive, you can download the whole shebang by going to Account Settings > General > Download a copy of your Facebook Data > Start My Archive.
Unlike on Facebook, on Twitter deactivate means delete. And it’s easy! Go to Account Settings> Deactivate my account > Okay, fine, deactivate account. Then just enter your password and you’re good to go.
Well,
almost, anyway. Twitter also holds onto your info in case you have
quitter’s remorse, so it’ll still stick around on the company’s servers
for 30 days. After that, though, you’re all clear for a RTless life.