If you are reading this article, it is probably because you have personal information available to thousands of people and you would like that to stop happening. Once you’re on the Internet, it’s very difficult – if not impossible – to completely remove yourself from it, but there are ways you can minimize your online footprint as much as possible. But before deleting your data from the Internet, you should know why you are doing it and the consequences that doing so could have, since it could negatively affect your ability to communicate with other people through the network.

How to delete data on the Internet?

  1. But if you still want to delete your Internet data in order to have your privacy intact, don’t worry and keep reading because you can get it. Although you should be aware that this can take more than a day and there may be information that you simply can never remove from the Internet.
  2. Delete or deactivate your accounts. You will have to delete or deactivate your social networks, your online purchases and your web service accounts. Social networks -Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn are an example-, commercial accounts -Amazon is a clear example, but it is possible that you frequent other places of purchase- or web services -such as Dropbox- should be deleted from your life. To get rid of these accounts you must go to the settings of each one and look for the option to deactivate, delete or close the account.
  3. Remove your information from websites. Check with your telephone company that you are not on any commercial list and if so, order them to remove you from that list. You can delete your messages in forums or blogs where you wrote in your day, you should contact the webmaster of each site individually.
  4. Remove search engine results. Any internet search place like Bing, Yahoo, or Google can help you remove the specific URLs you want. For example, if someone has posted sensitive information like your social security number or bank account and the webmaster doesn’t want it removed, you can contact search engine companies to have it removed from search results.
  5. Delete your email. Email is a very practical tool in our current society but if you want to delete your data on the Internet you must delete it too. You will need to deactivate or delete your account.