Disappear from social media and the Internet

Are you tired of watching the news and seeing the latest privacy breach within your favorite social media sites? Are you tired of organizations mishandling of the data that you entrusted with them? Do you want to disappear from the Internet? Do you want to escape from your digital past? Do you know how?

TACKLE THE BIG 4

The first thing that you want to erase yourself from the four largest social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. These four social media sites have the greatest reach within the digital community.

FACEBOOK

Within the Security settings on your Facebook page, you will see a link to ‘Deactivate your account”. The exact path to get there is Account Settings > Security > Deactivate your account. Just because you selected deactivate your account keep in mind that this does not delete your account and the information within the account. If you just select deactivate your account, then you will have the several options available to you. One of the available options is the ability to come back to Facebook in the future. Deactivation does not mean deletion. You would need to select the button “Delete My Account”. Once your selection this button all of the data that you have posted within Facebook will be gone. Every picture that you were tagged in, like or mention will be gone…for good.

If you wanted to keep your pictures or videos you may still do so (please do this before you delete your account). The exact path to do so is Account Settings > General > Download a copy of your Facebook Data > Start My Archive.

TWITTER

It is easier to delete yourself from Twitter. With Twitter, deactivate means delete. There are no gray areas with Twitter. To delete your account, you would follow this path Account Settings > Deactivate My Account > Okay, fine, Deactivate Account. If for some reason you start having second thoughts, Twitter will hold your information for 30 days. After 30 days all of your information will be permanently deleted. This 30-day cushion is good if you change your mind for some reason.

LinkedIn is also easy. All you have to do is delete yourself from the upper right-hand corner of the page. Select the Privacy & Settings option from the drop-down menu then to Account > Close Your Account. Just answer a few quick and easy questions, verify one more time on your intentions, and you are good to go.

GOOGLE+

In order to get rid of any public information that you may have on Google+, you need to first log into your account. Click on your name or email address in the upper right-hand corner the follow this path, Account Management > Delete Profile and Remove Related Google+ features > Delete Google+ Content. Just like that your Google+ profile is gone. If you want to take it a step further, you can delete your entire Google account. Just go to your Google Account Homepage, click Close Account and delete all services.