Developers from Sweden allow users to erase their web presence
25 Nov 2016
People who want to erase their footprints on the web can now do so, thanks to two developers from Sweden, Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck, .
All they need to do is to visit Deseat.me, a page which allows them to wipe their entire web presence clean.
They need to log in with a Google account, and the programme would scan for any apps or services they had created accounts for.
For every account it finds, the programme gives users a 'delete' link, which takes them to that service's unsubscribe page.
It probably takes a few clicks per account to delete, so – depending on how much of themselves they had put out there – it would take only an hour or two to work through their way deleting their presence on the web completely.
The site leverages the fact that many of users' online accounts are linked together by a common thread -- Google. By signing into the site with their Google credentials, Deseat.me would find all their linked accounts and give them the option of wiping them out in one go.
After they visit the Deseat.me page, users need to click the 'sign in with Google' button, enter their Google credentials and give the site permission to access their account. Whenever users want, they can revoke Deseat.me's access to their account from within Google settings.
Users would be presented with a list of other online accounts that had been found to be associated with them, some of which they may want to keep, and wipe out the others. They can work their way through the list, indicating whether they wanted to keep the account or add it to the queue to be deleted.
