Is It Possible To Erase Yourself From the Internet? 295
Barence writes "Do you remember what you posted on that music forum in 2004? Or which services you tried for webmail before Gmail? We often forget online services, but they don't forget us. PC Pro has investigated whether it's possible to retrospectively wipe yourself from the internet. It discusses how difficult it is to get your data removed from Facebook, Google and other popular web services, as well as reputation management services that promise to bury unwanted internet content on your behalf."
What about slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
It's the New You (Score:3)
How do I get rid of all those incriminating posts from all that time I wasted on /. while I was at work?
Log out and sign up with a different nick.
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Get back to work Chris, I know it's you.
Re:It's the New You (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I don't get it. Whenever I hear shit like this, I think "wait, why is this a problem?! Why are you using your REAL IDENTITY everywhere?!".
I mean, granted, I use my real first name -- but everyone knows I'm a fucktard within like two minutes of meeting me, so hiding my stupidity is sort of a lost cause.
Re:It's the New You (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's the New You (Score:5, Insightful)
You only need one leak between a consistent alias and your legal identity to connect all the dots though. The idea that you'll be forever vigilant and never goof up on an alias is a bit optimistic. Why is that approach any less prone to mistakes than being vigilant about your real name? You could rotate aliases instead, but that increases complexity, and complexity introduces its own increased odds of error. You could make the same argument about having a single alias too. I see having to guard at least one usernames as being unavoidable if you want to participate on discussion forums. I don't have any illusions that using a non-real name on its own provides me improved security though.
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Google's youtube had no trouble connecting my real name to my youtube alias. I suspect that it's extremely hard to never leak information, possibly involving separate hardware (or at least virtual separate hardware), vpns for unrelated IP addresses, and never giving google your credit card info -- for each online alias. I do have an android phone and google play account so it isn't rocket science to imagine how google could cobble together who I am from that info. IP address plus credit info (which inclu
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True, but I didn't think of it at the time which is an example of how leaking info is so easy.
Re:It's the New You (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly true.
I used to play a game and we did a lot of outside the game strategical collaboration. In doing this, we use Google Docs and everyone who edited some of the papers made gmail accounts under their game persona. Anyways, to cut to the chase, I recently logged into Google Drive which everything was migrated to for a copy of one of the docs. on the right hand side of the page was everyone who collaborated on them and I didn't recognize any of the name. They also had pics associated with the names. It didn't take long to figure out that Google associated them with a live person and put the image from their profile on them. I was also able to look at the Gmail addresses associated with them to find not only the character Gmail address but their main identity on Gmail. I then followed that identity and put a couple clues together from discussions in game and was able to find out an alarming amount of information about them. In one case, I was even able to use Google maps and their street view thing to get a street address on one of them from what she described, pics posted to her face book page, and posts on her friends pages.
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su -c "yum remove myself"
sudo apt-get purge myself
sudo apt-get remove myself
sudo find / -iname "*myself*" -exec rm -rf {} \;
'; delete from users where id='myself'; delete from posts where user_id='myself'; --
No. (Score:4, Informative)
No.
Its all about the noise (Score:2, Interesting)
As a fellow AC you should know better. The question is wrong. Keep the signal to noise ratio high and you will never have a need to regret your internet diving past.
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No.
Ian, is that you? [wikipedia.org]
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This problem is easily solved (Score:2)
by using a handle (pseudonym) and never your real name.
Take that, Zuckerberg and Schmidt
Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Informative)
I find facebook's "is this really X's real name" queries to your social contacts especially dangerous.
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It takes more than that. You also have to compartmentalize your real and assumed identities so your friends and acquaintances who do not value your privacy do not link them for you. I find facebook's "is this really X's real name" queries to your social contacts especially dangerous.
Facebook is an intel organization's dream.
FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
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... for our corporate overlords, and may also be useful to the elected government, as they serve those overlords.
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, even if you are aware and intelligent, that doesn't stop the stupid from tagging your happy anonymous butt in that picture they took 10 years ago of you with their sister... and blammo, now you are "in the system" and identified, your correlation factor may be low, but something will come up when you're queried and if it's the only thing....
The only way to "erase" yourself is not to remove all bits of you, but to poison the well. Create many false accounts and post lots of irrelevant things, some about you with bad data if you're already all over the net. The higher the noise level you create with the more false data, the less valuable the "true" data is since data mining becomes less and less certain. Another fun thing - make some accounts with variations of your name, close but not exact, then post the passwords in forums and let random people take them where you want. Remember, you're not interested in reputation - you're interested in bad data.
Your last option would be to have been born a John Smith or Kim Davis - I've known a few of both. Locating specific people with those names is rather difficult.
Re:FTFY (Score:4, Interesting)
Yea, that is one way to quickly become a blonde, bald, hermaphrodite with serious mental illness bent on world domination. That should trigger the DHS watchlist developers scouring the net for their next target.
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Yea, that is one way to quickly become a blonde, bald, hermaphrodite with serious mental illness bent on world domination
They found him. Pope Benedict has now resigned.
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Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything and everything can come back to haunt you. And occasionally someone does give a shit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Assuming this is something that happened to you, surely if that is the law and the general sentiment around where you are, you should be more prudent about not making it obvious? A bit like, how one can heartily enjoy the occasional spliff, but one wouldn't go blabbering about it to everyone in the world (which is essentially what doing anything with facebook actually is)
Also, move to somewhere less fucked in the head. Just saying...
Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
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Where your life will be filmed by the myriad of critter cams out there.
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Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Funny)
Thoreau and Kaczynski tried it, but then they couldn't resist writing a manifesto.
Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
by using a handle (pseudonym) and never your real name.
It's a lot easier to connect the dots than you might think...
Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Insightful)
by using a handle (pseudonym) and never your real name.
It's a lot easier to connect the dots than you might think...
Yep. Sometimes it's something as simple as an IP address, cookie, or Flash cookie that will do it. Or something more subtle, like unique web browser signatures (eg. the collection of fonts installed on your system is reported by some browsers and and can serve as a unique fingerprint.). And keep in mind, as far as I know there are no privacy laws that prevent an ISP from reporting the real name of a subscriber given their IP address, and many give that information out to police without warrants.
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you need just one VM, which has a fingerprint, which is shared with many other VM users. think of the tails live-system for example. I think it has a fingerprint, which is unique to one version of tails, and shared between many users of this version.
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I do that with a "blog/social media name" that I use. (My Slashdot account pre-dates this pseudonym.) The problem is that as I get in touch with more and more people online under my pseudonym (especially as I go to conferences and the like), more and more people know my real name. Which means that any one of them can reveal it online (whether out of malice or just not thinking). My pseudonym will be publicly linked with my real name someday. It's inevitable. My only home is to delay that for as long a
Re:This problem is easily solved (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't work... at all... they don't care what your real name is. All they care about is being able to uniquely identify you, and target you with adds. Your full name is a horrible data point for that because there are probably dozens, if not thousands of other people with your same name. I have a rather unique name IRL and there are still at least 20 people I've found with the identical first and last.
Instead they track you based on dozens of data points combined. Any of which can not match, but if they have enough data points they can still be sure it's you based on the rest of the data points that match.
So lets say they have the following info on you:
Email address
IP address
Operating system
Browser
Fonts installed
Start page (where you launched their site from)
This is a rather simple list. Most marketing software tracks much more than this.
So they track when you login. In general, most of the above information is given over by default by your browser, besides the email address. The email address is the holy grail of data points because, even if you give them a bullshit email address (like you make up one on hotmail just for spam) you tend to use that same account on all sites. So every time you login they log all this data on you. Then their software collates all this data into: 100% of the time you logged in with all of the above data being the same with the exception of IP address. That seems to change between 2 IPs daily. Then, once a moth both those IPs change at random. A quick query shows that the first IP belongs to AT&T, and is clearly your home IP address. The second IP belongs to a company, and you access it between 8 and 3pm... so now they know where you work, and the hours you work.
Generally they don't need all of this, as long as they have a verified email address. BUT... then you come to the point where you switch emails. Or you have multiple accounts to thwart your tracking efforts. BUT, they have all of these other data points. They can still confirm it's you to an error fact higher than the number of people in the united states. That's good enough for them, and they link the data between the 2 accounts and add your new email address to your list of email addresses in their database.
But you say "AH WAIT! I didn't give my new email address to that site... I went over to this other one! They can't track me!" That's great, but it doesn't work. As things go now, the site you're at purchased a marketing package from a cloud service company. A company that tracks all of this data across thousands of sites. The marketing service likely even has peering agreements with other services.
Long story short? No matter what you do... how you protect yourself... you can not evade this tracking. You could use TOR but that would just be another data point for them. The very fact that your IP changes every time you log in is identifying. You may think that none of this matters, they don't have any of your real life data. But the fact is, they don't care about that. They just want to sell you stuff... whomever you are. Oh, and by the way, the second you buy anything online, they have all that real life data in spades.
Use virtual machines. SOLVED. (Score:3)
If you load up a virtual machine then there are no unique cookies, fonts, or anything on it uniquely you.
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you don't seem to understand. Some of that marketing companies biggest customers are probably your ISP, your bank, your school, your employer. You can not escape this. You cannot be anonymous on the internet and still use the internet in any meaningful way. Could you use TOR and never do anything but IRC chat and remain mostly anon? Probably. But what's the point then?
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Or getting married, having children, owning or renting a house or any other thing society requires for living in its world.
ftfy
Step 1 - NEVER close an old email account (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Step 1 - NEVER close an old email account (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say I do from 15 years ago, but I have done for the last 6 years at least. Every time I create a new account, I invariably record the details (including the fake DOB and mother's maiden name -- jokes on them, I'm a bastard) in a text file along with all the rest.
I also provide various fake email addresses (mailinator ftw) and record them.
Basically, I could prove that I (Dr. Janet J. Smithers) do in fact own three /. accounts, six Wikipedia accounts, various file sharing accounts, multiple Yahoo accounts, Google accounts, multiple forum accounts, etc. Even though I do not use the same pseudonym anywhere anymore (I provide a different one in every location). I also try and vary my writing style, here I'm literate. Over de i kant rite 2 gud. It makes it harder connect the dots I hope.
I also don't have Flash or Java plugin installed any longer, which limits attack vectors there. I limit JavaScript to certain domains. I have installed RequestPolicy and other privacy preserving plugins. Though I still find it strange I keep getting ads for chew toys...
The point of all that was, I can't remove myself from the Internet. E.g. to delete /. posts would require more effort than I feel like putting in. However, I can limit the damage by separating various parts of myself and making it harder to connect them. If I could delete forum posts from 2002 I would though.
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I also don't have Flash or Java plugin installed any longer, which limits attack vectors there. I limit JavaScript to certain domains. I have installed RequestPolicy and other privacy preserving plugins. Though I still find it strange I keep getting ads for chew toys...
It may sound paradoxical, but the fact that you don't have Flash or Java plugin installed and JavaScript limited (on presumably on non-iOS based browser) makes you easier to track from the web site perspective, since most folks do have these things. You may not realize how your setup makes you stick out like a sore thumb for advertisers, like google.
Keep out of my archives (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not happy when people dig into forums and start scrubbing bits out of them; it means that if I want to keep an accurate history of things I can look at, I need to save a copy, and if I'm having an internet argument with someone I need to stash a copy of everything they say on my website (or at least ready to go up there) to preserve coherency.
For people who I think might try to disappear, or for people who frequently delete or censor their blogposts/discussion posts, I already do this, but it's a pain in the butt. I don't want it to be more common.
It's healthier for society to accept that people change than to let everyone reenact 1984 every time they get nervous.
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It's healthier for society to accept that people change than to let everyone reenact 1984 every time they get nervous.
I take this statement to mean you've never actually read that particular tome.
You should.
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I have. Perhaps you're familiar with the editing of history that was a theme in the work?
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Well, sure, by Big Brother, but not even Party members were allowed to alter their own history without express permission.
Re:Keep out of my archives (Score:5, Insightful)
It's healthier for society to accept that people change than to let everyone reenact 1984 every time they get nervous.
I can control what I do. I can't control whether or not 'society will accept that I've changed'.
As long as that remains true (and I don't see it changing anytime) only a fool will 'rely on society to accept...' anything, if they have any choice in the matter.
Whats the internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats the internet? They just listed some specific services. I'm on usenet going back to 1989, I believe. Certainly 1991 at worst. Anyone younger than 35 or so pretty much just said "usenet? whats that?"
Amusingly they didn't list what it takes to remove yourself from compuserve (I was on from 1981 till... donno) and prodigy and myspace and ...
30 years from now you'll mention you were on linkedin and the 22 year old girls in HR who filter the resumes will say, "huh? Whats a linkedin?" Ditto facebook, G+, etc.
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Fortunately, the search engines appear to have forgotten about USENET. I'm in the same boat, and I used my real name too.
My current strategy is to avoid saying anything on-line that could blow back to me, and I always use a pseudonym. However, with a vast history, I wonder how anonymous I really am.
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Google Groups search finds any post on Usenet matching the search criteria. Note that flaming or embarrassing posts are generally at the top of the search results.
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I suspect 3 years is the more accurate prediction.....
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Back then everything was done with pseudonyms so you can just switch to a new one and ditch your old identity any time you like. All you every posted was text or low res images. Nowadays every site wants your real name, and everyone uploads high quality photos with geotagging.
PS. I'm 32 and have been using Usenet for at least 15 years.
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I was probably there with you
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20 years ago, there wasn't a highly developed industry devoted to tracking your every internet move for profit. Now there is. That changes a lot --- the HR drone 30 years from now may not recognize the "LinkedIn" brand-name, but they'll be able to pull up every bit of collected data, meticulously passed from tracking corporation to tracking corporation at every merger, to determine if your past life conforms to a suitably-exploitable profile.
Don't do it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood the fascination so many tech luddites and techies-who-think-they're-cool-by-hating-being-on-the-internet to try to erase their online presence. It'll only come back to bite you.
You don't have to share everything, but establishing your presence and "owning your name" gives you some measure of control in regards to what people find if they search for you. If you go the "you can't see me" route, anyone with a vendetta or anything (good or bad) that gets you in the news is suddenly all anyone searching sees. You can't control everything by being online, but you certainly have more control than if you try to hide.
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You don't have to share everything, but establishing your presence and "owning your name" gives you some measure of control in regards to what people find if they search for you.
I'm less worried about my reputation and more worried about people looking for ways to leverage inadvertantly disclosed information about me to their own advantage. If your are lucky the best you can expect is to control some of what google shows on the first page of search results under your name. That's only good for the most casual of searchers - anyone actively looking for dirt on you will go far past that first page of hits.
With respect to reputation if you do suddenly get famous enough to be "in th
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gives you some measure of control in regards to what people find if they search for you.
Only when you are into search-engine-optimization, otherwise you can write insightful stuff for years, but some silly blog post that got popular for one reason or another might bobble up to the top of the search results. All the stuff you do online isn't really properly reflected by the search results people get when they input your name, only a small seemingly random portion is.
change your name (Score:5, Insightful)
You can erase your history completely if you change your name. Your new name (if well chosen) will have no Internet history associated with it.
Re:change your name (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:change your name (Score:5, Insightful)
Or pick one so popular that it's impossible to pick you out of all of the other John Smiths on the net.
Exactly. It is far easier to hide in a crowd of a million than yourself in an empty field.
Anyone considering getting a fake id in real life should pick from the most common first and family names (there are name frequency lists you can google for) - John Smith really is super common but it is almost a cliche. If you go with something like Tom Johnson you will still be in the company of hundreds of thousands of other Tom Johnsons and not seem quite so fake.
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Most service that claim to need your real name actually just need a real sounding name. There is no need to use your actual name in the first place.
Re:change your name (Score:4, Funny)
Not necessarily. True story: I once had "Greg Smith Equipment Sales" try to buy my web site because I was messing with their search rank. What really killed both of us was a baseball player with that name though. Once ESPN started writing about him I was done with being in the top 3. I wouldn't recommend just any common name; what you really want is the name of a celebrity. I use "Michael Bolton" now.
You used to be able to (Score:2)
Many years ago you could e-mail an address at google, yahoo, as well as others and they would remove your personal data from the listings. I used to do it every year. Do a search on my self and remove all reference to me. It worked great but they all stopped it and no longer honor requests for removal.
They really should bring it back, Not saying there needs to be a law but a movement to be an upstanding member of the online community and let you request removal of your information.
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Is It Possible...? (Score:2, Funny)
magic (Score:2)
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I'm not on the internet in the first place. Any site that asks for a real name didn't get one. I never touched myspace or facebook, etc. Even my Gmail name is fake. So I'm all set.
Doesn't gmail log every IP you logged in from?
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Doesn't gmail log every IP you logged in from?
GMail can read your mail; that is a bigger hole than the IP address of a coffee shop.
Google, however, usually does not have a need to try and discover your real life identity. It is not automatically published for everyone to see. That is what is important. If a corporation sells your browser fingerprint, use a different browser. This one, FF with AdBlock + NoScript + Ghostery + whatever else, shows no ads, blocks web bugs, and runs no scripts. It may still
It's complicated (Score:5, Funny)
I have a solution, but it involves simultaneous use of biological viruses and nukes. At a minimum, my solution will at least erase anyone's desire to care.
My net history is all a clever ruse: (Score:2)
I make people think I'm another harmless fool on the internet.
By pretty much being another harmless fool on the internet.
Remember. Sincerity is the key to everything.
Once you can fake that, the rest is easy.
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So your master plan is to fool people into believing you are what you actually are?
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Make it a publicity right (Score:4, Interesting)
While, in the US (or even the EU), we're not likely to see a "right to be forgotten", we might have a "right not to have one's identity exploited for advertising purposes". You should be able to quit an ad-supported service and insist that none of your data every appear on a page with an ad. If it does, the advertiser has to pay you a publicity fee. California has a law like that for photos - if you use someone's photo in an ad without their permission, you owe them at least $500 - much more if they're famous.
The best kind of privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
If 100% of everything anyone ever did and said were preserved for all of history, it would be the best thing that could happen for privacy.
Sure everyone could find any information they wanted, but that information would be less exploitable.
For example, a company you applied for a job to finds a picture of you getting wasted on New Years. Should they not hire you because you are a drunk? Well it turns out that they can also find drunk pictures of just about every applicant so you are no different.
Every single "bad" thing about you will either turn out to be something that is not really that bad in light of the fact that almost everyone does it, or actually bad (in which case you might need to go to jail).
Another example: Your girlfriend finds out you cheated on her using google. You are an asshole. It also turns out that 70% of the people she knows have cheated. It also turns out she cheated on you too. This sucks. Well yes, but was it worse than when we all successfully hid our cheating? At least now cheating doesn't seem as bad. In fact it may not even be considered cheating anymore since everyone knows about it immediately after it happens.
The real reason for wanting privacy is to not be able to be singled out. If everyone is able to be singled out, then nobody is able to be singled out. When a regular polygon gets infinite sides, it becomes a circle with 0 sides.
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The real reason for wanting privacy is to not be able to be singled out.
Why do bathrooms have stalls then? We all go, and we all know that we all go.
Privacy has value beyond not being singled out.
I would hate to live in the world you described.
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I am spartacus (Score:2)
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Or go with Plan B: Don't cheat.
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Might work in the specific case, but not the general. As Richilieu said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. "
The more tortured the logic from the "evidence" to the accusation the better. And the best part? Any defense you raise only makes you sound guilty.
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You can't control who will single you out, or for what. If I am someone who judges people harshly based on X, then I only care whether you do/have done X, or not. I don't care how many other people have done X, because I am looking at *you* and judging you based on X.
So the fact that 75% of people have done X is irrelevant, and the fact that you have done 93 other things that are mildly embarrassing is irrelevant. If X, then I treat yo
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Feed the Monster Garbage (Score:5, Interesting)
I kind of did that with usenet (Score:2)
In a word... (Score:2)
no
No - Free Speech (Score:2)
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Geocities (Score:2)
Oh how I wish the wayback machine could remove all the old geocities data...
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Oh how I wish the wayback machine could remove all the old geocities data...
Because it's a waste of disk storage?
it's just too risky (Score:2)
I remember (Score:2)
Do you remember what you posted on that music forum in 2004?
I have never posted to a music forum. But if I did post something offensive or objectionable so what? Anyone that judges too harshly on such minor matters is best avoided anyway.
Or which services you tried for webmail before Gmail?
I used my own webmail before and after gmail. I once setup a gmail account solely to send my mail server test emails.
It discusses how difficult it is to get your data removed from Facebook
I've never had a facebook account. If I wanted the US government to build semantic graphs about my interpersonal relationships then I'd get a facebook account, but until that time I don't see the need for facebook in
"You can't delete something from the Internet." (Score:5, Funny)
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Not drained but billions of (insert all magnetic storage here) can be discharged around the world. There is a way, but I don't want my door being kicked down in 5min for saying how.
One does not simply... (Score:3)
One does not simply delete something from the Internet [imgur.com]
Yes, you can! (Score:2)
Sneaky fuckers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sneaky fuckers...
What do you think is the best method to get people to update old data? Require them to prove themselves in order to delete it, then simply ignore their request to delete it.
The moment you touch that old data, you've updated it with your current IP address. Once they have that, they can then connect the dots between new and old data, thus providing them with a much greater amount of information.
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You are using a proxy....aren't you?
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His name is Hash isn't it?
Of course! My good friend Hash Tag! We went to university together--great guy... Can really wail on the guitar.
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