Removing your digital traces ( Internet searchrs, google accounts and all other personal data)

[LoserInTown]

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

I don't know if someone has written a guide but i think i would be a good idea if someone does and they make it a sticky.

To start destroy or factory reset phone or pc . Then after reset on reset phone or pc use onlyTor, Tor browser, privacy email , privacy search engines(there are a lot of alternatives to google) and don't use google, Tor chat, burner accounts, use encrypted privacy operating systems like Tails etc.

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Which Linux Distro Is Best for Privacy? We've Done the Research [Guide]

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[Linda]

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

I could probably do a lot of that, as I have been working with computers for nearly half century, but to to do it properly I would need physical access to your machine, and I would probably need to talk to you a lot to obtain all relevant information. There will be a vast amount of data on your computer (or on whatever you use to access the internet). It can be erased securely, but you need at least a little technical knowledge. (Emptying your wastebasket does not get rid of files, and it is not very difficult to recover them.) What to do about information held on various sites will vary from site to site, and it is impractical to give advice that would cover all of them. Your best option is to find someone in your home town who you can trust and who is tech savvy, and ask them to do it for you.

 

[Noisette]

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

Usually the police don't investigate that far. Most likely the family goes in your stuff to find answers.
A cell phone just go in the settings and erase everything by selecting the factory reset. Your phone will be like a brand new one. Make sure to destroy your SD cards.

I think there's factory option for computers too but I'm not certain

 

[Linda]

Usually the police don't investigate that far. Most likely the family goes in your stuff to find answers.
A cell phone just go in the settings and erase everything by selecting the factory reset. Your phone will be like a brand new one. Make sure to destroy your SD cards.

I think there's factory option for computers too but I'm not certain

That kind of reset will NOT erase the data. It just removes the links to the data. The data can be recovered by anyone who is reasonable tech savvy. (Just DD the entire device to a large file on some other device, then scan that file looking for signatures of the kinds of files you want to recover. I have actually written software to do that for certain kinds of files.) Your family won't be able to recover that stuff, but law enforcement would be able to (if they wanted to, which perhaps they would not). To securely erase data on a device you must over-write it, preferably several times. If you are really paranoid, you would physically destroy the device, by melting it down or dissolving it in acid.

What is comes down to is who is going to go looking for your data. If it's just family members who are not technical people, a factory reset would probably be enough. If you have to defeat a more determined adversary, then you need to be much more thorough.

 

[a.h]

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

I have planned my exit strategy.
But I have no idea how to delete my digital presence, including accounts in sites like these. I don't want my searches to appear in the police investigation. Can anyone suggest a guide regarding this?

You can ask admins to ban you from here (you can ask them to unban you later if you change your mind). I don't know how to delete email accounts but you can ask the email provider about that. You can delete private messages and empty trash cans from emails, phone messages and cloud storages and then put factory settings to devices.

Cops can bring back deleted files and photos from phone etc. from the last 2-3 months. In time system overwrites on them. I don't know whether they can do it if factory settings have been installed to the device too. Someone smarter could maybe answer that.
EDIT:Someone smarter just did that above ;)

I would
1.delete everything private
2. Install factory settings
3. Brake and dumb the device far from home

I have read few times from USA news that police have decided that a death was suicide because deceased had factory settings set in his/her phones.
So if someone wanted to make it look like accident rather than suicide or at least leave room for that conclusion then it would be better to buy new phone and put factory settings and brake and dumb the old one before leaving this world. Tablets and phones brake so easily anyways and it's usually cheaper to buy new one than fix it. The old one could be used with VPN and prepaid card to use in sites like this. I would not do anything suspicious with that new phone then.

 

[Living_Hurts_so_Much]

I don't know if someone has written a guide but i think i would be a good idea if someone does and they make it a sticky.

To start destroy or factory reset phone or pc . Then after reset on reset phone or pc use onlyTor, Tor browser, privacy email , privacy search engines(there are a lot of alternatives to google) and don't use google, Tor chat, burner accounts, use encrypted privacy operating systems like Tails etc.

10 Best Privacy Oriented Search Engines To Google in 2023

In this age of the internet, you can never be too careful with your privacy. Use these alternative search engines that do not track you.

itsfoss.com

How to Get a Secret Phone Number (and Why You Need One)

These burner apps let you quickly create disposable phone numbers whenever you need to, which is much easier than buying and activating a burner phone.

uk.pcmag.com

Most Secure Email Providers in 2024 for Privacy Protection

ProtonMail is the most secure email provider. It protects traffic with advanced encryption, and it is located in a privacy-friendly location. Find more in this blog.

fastestvpn.com

Which Linux Distro Is Best for Privacy? We've Done the Research [Guide]

We look into how to find the best Linux distro for privacy and at the reasons experts suggest that Linux is far more secure than Windows or MacOS.

blokt.com

Best Linux distro for privacy and security of 2024

Fortify your Linux install with the best Linux distros for privacy and security

www.techradar.com

This is a great bunch of resources. Thank you.

 

[Raminiki]

If you go into settings on Google, Facebook and other accounts, you'll find options to delete, as well as legacy settings that will delete or disable accounts after a certain length of time, or if death is confirmed by a third party.

As others have said, it's easy to recover data. Physical destruction of all data storage devices is advised if it's important to you. This means removing the hard drives from computers, any external hard drives, phones, tablets etc, even USB sticks. Do this after deleting or disabling all accounts, so others may not access and re-enable anything to retrieve data. Facebook for example, will not delete an account but merely inactivate it and any login hence will reactivate it.

There are browser extensions that can erase all social media posts instead of you having to manually go through them all. I used one to delete my Facebook content. Your activity logs cannot be deleted. Browser history can be deleted in settings. Don't forget to delete your search history on your search engine pages. And delete texts and chat history from your phone. Other parties will keep their copies of anything sent, but you can at least erase yours. There are many things buried in your Google account that can be ferreted out and scrubbed. Google drive content, saved passwords, saved data from sites you frequent. You'll be amazed and alarmed by how much is buried in there. Even gps records of everywhere you've been with your phone can be found.

Be aware that engines such as way back machine may have archived pages with content you've publicly posted. You can't get rid of those, as far as I know.

You won't be able to completely erase all copies of your data that have been shared privately or publicly. Once it's out there, it's out there. But you can take measures to delete as much as possible.

I'd recommend smashing up and burning devices, then disposing of the remains in trash. Nothing short of that is unrecoverable by anyone with technical experience, or a simple recovery program.

 

[a.h]

If you go into settings on Google, Facebook and other accounts, you'll find options to delete, as well as legacy settings that will delete or disable accounts after a certain length of time, or if death is confirmed by a third party.

As others have said, it's easy to recover data. Physical destruction of all data storage devices is advised if it's important to you. This means removing the hard drives from computers, any external hard drives, phones, tablets etc, even USB sticks. Do this after deleting or disabling all accounts, so others may not access and re-enable anything to retrieve data. Facebook for example, will not delete an account but merely inactivate it and any login hence will reactivate it.

There are browser extensions that can erase all social media posts instead of you having to manually go through them all. I used one to delete my Facebook content. Your activity logs cannot be deleted. Browser history can be deleted in settings. Don't forget to delete your search history on your search engine pages. And delete texts and chat history from your phone. Other parties will keep their copies of anything sent, but you can at least erase yours. There are many things buried in your Google account that can be ferreted out and scrubbed. Google drive content, saved passwords, saved data from sites you frequent. You'll be amazed and alarmed by how much is buried in there. Even gps records of everywhere you've been with your phone can be found.

Be aware that engines such as way back machine may have archived pages with content you've publicly posted. You can't get rid of those, as far as I know.

You won't be able to completely erase all copies of your data that have been shared privately or publicly. Once it's out there, it's out there. But you can take measures to delete as much as possible.

I'd recommend smashing up and burning devices, then disposing of the
remains in trash. Nothing short of that is unrecoverable by anyone with technical experience, or a simple recovery program.
[/QUOTE

How can I delete everything that Google collected of me years ago when I used to use it?

Is it enough to take the battery out and throw the phone or tablet to trashbin miles from home or can they be traced without battery?
Will throwing devices to lake/sea do the trick?

The thought of police going through and reading all your personal things and at worse media writing about them is not nice. I mean deceased ones don't care but it can burden the loved ones. Media mostly writes mean staff about people and twists everything to make more shocking news so that people get interested.

Avoid These 'No-Log' VPN Services That Leaked Millions of Users' Data

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[Linda]

If you need a VPN, the best one I know of is proton. It isn't cheap, but as with most things you get what you pay for. They don't keep logs. If you connect via their Swiss sites you will also benefit from the very strong Swiss privacy laws. You can also access the Tor network from their portals, if you need to visit any .onion sites. A good VPN will prevent your ISP from seeing which sites you are visiting. However, it will not make any difference at all to what finishes up on your own computer, and ordinary browsing leaves behind a HUGE amount of information. You can't easily remove it. You need either technical knowledge or a good app. For securely erasing data from a PC that runs a Microsoft operating system, there are several apps available. The best one I know of is EastTec Eraser. Again, it isn't the cheapest product out there.

A hostile website can easily determine your IP address, even across the Tor network, unless you disable javascript. Law enforcement does operate honeypot sites on Tor to trap users in that (and other) ways. Law enforcement would be mainly concerned with things like large-scale drug dealing, child pornography, etc, and would probably not care about the things that typical users of this site do. But if you are doing other kinds of things, or if you have a real need for privacy, you do need to take precautions.

If you are really paranoid, you should use a live operating system, such as Tails, together with the Tor browser, when you go online. That won't leave any traces at all on your computer after a browsing session (unless you explicitly download files). However it does require more effort.

I have been working with computers since 1971, so do have some knowledge on matters like these.

I have no commercial stake in either of the products I mentioned, but I have used both of them.

 

[Belit667]

I'm going to smash my smartphone and destroy and dispose of HDDs of my laptops.

 

[LoserInTown]

Thank you for the replies folks. While these answers will help me for sure in, however short a future I have, I was asking more asking the lines of deleting my internet presence, whatever I have done upto date. Facebook, Instagram and other social media have been accounted for. I was talking about deleting all the data which has been accumulated by Google, Facebook etc over the years.

I will be physically destroying my hard drive and my phone, so no worries in that regard. I was seeking help more along the line of deleting things and damage control rather than prevention.

Perhaps the admins should pin a thread regarding this, so that it will help others. Is there any way to contact them?
Thanks for the help.