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Your digital footprint grows with every internet account you make. While your old Tumblr account may be fun for reminiscing, dormant accounts are actually one of the most significant sources of user data on the internet. These accounts can be used by data brokers or third parties to access your personal information.
To improve your data security, it’s good practice to remove public-facing information by deleting unused accounts. Simply put, having less personal data stored on the internet reduces the risk of theft and/or non-consensual data usage.
Deleting, canceling, unsubscribing, or removing your account can be a long process, depending on the service. This article will walk you through the simplest ways to delete unwanted accounts from various social media platforms.
Deleting unwanted accounts protects your information and prevents the monetization of your data. Your internet accounts often hold personal information like your name, age, email, or home address. What’s more alarming is that some platforms may even have credit card details, phone numbers, and bank account information.
When left unattended, internet accounts become vulnerable to being suspended or taken over by the platform. This means that if your accounts are left inactive for too long, you might be handing some or all of your data over to the tech platform.
For example, even if you believe an old Google account doesn’t have any sensitive information stored, it may be linked to other platforms you use (like Amazon or Google services like Gmail and Google Play). This exposes all of these accounts to several data privacy vulnerabilities.
Moreover, a recent survey found that 70% of surveyed adults admitted using the same password for more than one service. People who don’t use password managers or reuse passwords are at a greater security risk than others, as multiple accounts can become compromised at once. Whether the platform is now out of service or you are cutting down on your app usage, deleting dormant accounts will minimize security threats and safeguard your data.
Every platform has a different process for deleting accounts: Some take only a few clicks to complete and others are a little longer. Companies usually don’t want a user to stop using their services, so account deletion pages are often hidden in a complex web of tabs that you have to navigate.
In addition, some subscription services might require that you send an email to customer support to close your account. You can go to justdelete.me, an online directory that lets you access direct links to account deletion pages of various web services.
Remember to download your personal information and data before pulling the plug on your account. Most platforms let you download your data before initiating a deletion request, which saves you from losing important details and files. It is also important to check whether your Google account is used for your YouTube channel or connected to other online accounts.
To help you get rid of accounts you no longer use, we’ve broken down deleting accounts from some of the most popular social networks. The steps described below are for a desktop browser and may not apply to Android or iOS devices (unless specified).
Facebook’s user privacy policy enables it to store a large amount of user information, including personal messages, posts, search history, name, age, birthdate, and even metadata from posted photos and videos.
Follow these simple steps to delete your Facebook account:
LinkedIn collects information on users and uses it for targeted advertising. As a result, it amasses quite a lot of your data, from professional details to personal preferences and even your online behavior trail.
Follow these simple steps from your desktop to delete your account:
It’s simple to delete your Twitter account, but you’ll have to wait 30 days for your data and tweets to clear. To delete your account, you first need to deactivate it.
Once you’ve decided to delete your account from the micro-blogging site, follow these steps from your desktop:
Remember to revoke third-party access to your Twitter account to avoid having your account reactivated in the 30 days following deactivation.
Since Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta, they share a lot of data for targeted advertising. You can adjust the privacy settings of your Instagram account from the mobile app, but you will need to log in from a web browser like Chrome to delete your account.
To delete your Instagram account:
Your information and data will be permanently deleted after 30 days and you won’t be able to retrieve it. However, completing a deletion process may take up to 90 days.
Tumblr has a fairly simple process to delete your account:
Follow these steps to delete your account from the popular picture-sharing platform:
Pinterest servers continue to store your data after deletion, but your information won’t be visible to other users.
There are different steps to deleting your email account depending on which email service you use. Backing up email data usually takes more time because of the sheer volume of data a mail account can hold.
Complete the following steps to delete your Google account:
Here’s what you need to do to delete your Yahoo email account:
Deleting your Yahoo account also deletes the linked information from Yahoo’s other services.
Follow these steps to delete your Microsoft account on Outlook 2010, 2013, or 2016:
Leaving old information scattered across the internet makes you susceptible to identity theft. There are multiple ways to keep your identity and data secure online, including McAfee’s Total Protection plan.
Total Protection lets you choose from multiple affordable subscription models that provide comprehensive security against identity theft and potential data breaches and offers web protection and several related benefits. In addition, having access to 24/7 online security experts and a 30-day money-back guarantee make the Total Protection plan an easy, reliable, and safe choice. You can also have peace of mind with McAfee’s Personal Data Cleanup feature where our teams will work to find your personal information online and assist in removing it.
The post How to Delete Old Accounts Containing Personal Information appeared first on McAfee Blog.
What do social media companies really know about you? It’s a fair question. And the quick answer is this: the more you use social media, the more those companies likely know.
The moment you examine the question more closely, the answer takes on greater depth. Consider how much we use social media for things other than connecting with friends. While that was the original intent behind social networks, the role of social media has since evolved into something far more expansive. We use it to get our news, stay up to date on when artists will drop a new release, and sometimes reach out for customer service on a company’s social media page. In some cases, we use our social media accounts to log into other sites and apps or we even make payments through social media.
Taken together, all of those likes, taps, clicks, links, and time spent reading or watching videos can add up and paint a detailed picture of who you are.
Why are they collecting all this information? Largely, it’s for two reasons:
1. To make improvements to their platform, by better understanding your behavior and ways you like to use their service.
2. To create an exacting user profile that advertisers can use for targeting ads that they think will interest you.
That’s the exchange in play here. You use the company’s social media service for free, and in return, they gain rights to gather specific information about you, which you consent to by agreeing to their terms of service.
Let’s get into the details of what social media companies may collect and know about you—along with ways you can limit the data and information they gather.
Different social media platforms have different user agreements that cover what types of information they collect and use. For starters, we’ll speak broadly about social media companies in general, and then we’ll weave in a few specific examples along the way. Generally, they may know:
We collect information about how you use our Products, such as the types of content you view or engage with; the features you use; the actions you take; the people or accounts you interact with; and the time, frequency and duration of your activities.
When you communicate with others by sending or receiving Direct Messages, we will store and process your communications and information related to them. This includes link scanning for malicious content, link shortening to http://t.co URLs, detection of spam, abuse and prohibited images, and use of reported issues. We also use information about whom you have communicated with and when (but not the content of those communications) to better understand the use of our services, to protect the safety and integrity of our platform, and to show more relevant content.
If you use our Products for purchases or other financial transactions (such as when you make a purchase in a game or make a donation), we collect information about the purchase or transaction. This includes payment information, such as your credit or debit card number and other card information; other account and authentication information; and billing, shipping and contact details.
By the way, none of this is secret. What I’ve listed here can be found by simply reading the terms of use posted by various social media companies. Note that these terms of use can and do change. Checking up on them regularly will help you understand what is being collected and how it may be used.
This nearly goes without saying, yet another layer of data and information collection comes by way of the pictures and updates you post. Per Instagram (as of October 2021):
We collect the content, communications and other information you provide when you use our Products, including when you sign up for an account, create or share content, and message or communicate with others. This can include information in or about the content you provide (like metadata), such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created.
Another consideration is how the content you interact with on other sites may be shared with social media companies in return. Some social media companies partner with other third parties to gather this data, which is used to round out your user profile in yet more detail. That information can include purchases you made, how often you visited that third party’s site, and so on.
In the case of Facebook, they refer to this as “Off-Facebook Activity.” In their words:
Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organizations share with us about your interactions with them. Interactions are things like visiting their website or logging into their app with Facebook. Off-Facebook activity does not include customer lists that businesses use to show a unique group of customers relevant ads.
The good news here is that you can take control of the Off-Facebook Activity setting with a few clicks.
No doubt about it, the content you create and interact with, both on the social media sites and sometimes off of them as well, can generate information about you that’s collected by social media companies.
Short of deleting your accounts altogether, there are several things you can do to take control and limit the amount of information you share.
For example, you can visit your Facebook Settings, Instagram Settings, and Twitter Settings, which each gives you options for managing your information—or download it and even delete it from their platform outright if you wish. (Note that this will likely only delete data associated with your account. Content you posted or shared with other people on their accounts will remain.)
As noted above, this isn’t an absolute fix because social media companies can infer your location other ways. Yet taking this step gives them one less piece of exacting information about you.
Each platform will have its own settings and options, so give them a look. Here, you can determine which information advertisers are allowed to use to serve up ads to you, set rules for facial recognition, enable or disable location history, and much more. If possible, do this from your computer or laptop rather than your smartphone. Often, the account controls that you can access from a computer browser are far more comprehensive than the ones in a mobile app.
Using direct messaging on social media platforms may tell social media companies even more about you and who you interact with. When possible, think about using text messaging instead or other means of communication that aren’t tied to a social media company.
Some apps and sites will allow you to use your social media login instead of creating a new one. While convenient, this can provide the social media company with more information about you. Additionally, if your social media account is compromised, it could compromise the other accounts that are tied to it as well. Check your settings and look for “Apps and Websites” to see what’s connected to your social media account, what’s being shared, and how you can disable it.
Protection like ours will include a VPN, which anonymizes your online activity and thus may shield you from certain types of information collection, such as your location. Additionally, using online protection software is simply a good move because it can create and store strong, unique passwords for you, steer you clear of risky sites, protect your identity, and make your time online safer overall.
The very nature of social media is sharing and exchanging. That’s the draw it has—the way it keeps us connected to the people, pastimes, and things we care about. Yet that exchange runs deeper. In return for using these free services, social media companies collect information on us which they use to improve their platforms and generate revenue. It’s all there for you to see in the various terms of use associated with your social media accounts. In short, using social media means sharing information about yourself with social media companies.
Yet you can do several things to reduce the amount of information that social media companies know about you. By spending some time on the account and privacy settings for each of your social media accounts, you can determine what information you’re providing to them and get a much better sense of what social media companies know about you.
The post What Do Social Media Companies Know About You? appeared first on McAfee Blog.
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