With the increasing influence of sites like Facebook and Twitter, it’s no surprise that people can be so accessible on the Internet. It’s a great way to reconnect with old friends and family that you’ve lost contact with over the years. But this accessibility comes with a price. The more information about yourself you put out there, the greater the risk of social networking going wrong and your information being compromised.
So what happens if you decide you’ve had enough and want to “erase” your digital life? Is that even possible?
According to Abine who makes DeleteMe it is. Similar to how a “do not call” list works, for the low, low price of $99, this service will remove you from some of the top people search databases including Been Verified, Public Records Now, People Lookup and many more. (Sorry, I didn’t see anything about steak knives being included if you act now.) This process will take some time and DeleteMe won’t erase your entire existence. So if you’re on the run from the mob, this service probably won’t do you much good. Some information simply can’t be removed.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Time and again I’ve been curious enough to Google myself to see what is out there and it can almost be scary how accurate some results can be. After all, given the nature of my business, if I wasn’t “out there,” then I’d have to wonder if I’m doing my job correctly. And that’s not the only irony in deleting all the data we’ve put together.
Abine uses DeleteMe to keep private information private. But it makes me chuckle that a company specializing in removing data will have data stored for the people they are removing.
Information equals power and data equals money. The importance of having data means so much to so many. Companies want to learn as much as they can about their consumers so they can continue to market to them correctly. Some do it so well that you don’t even realize you’re being marketed to. After all, doesn’t this process does help sustain our economic ecosystem?
What do you think?
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