Remember Heat? Robert DeNiro and Pacino. DeNiro, drinking coffee, in a coffee shop, as you do, says to Val Kilmer, who is doing up his laces: “A guy told me one time, ‘Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.’”
He’s a bank robber, so it makes sense. It’s been quoted by creepy guys who can’t commit to relationships a million times. But what about you: you don’t rob banks or anything, but you’ve wanted to disappear (from the internet).
Imagine how peaceful it would be – your mind will be clear, or at least clearer. You’ll be able to switch off a little and finally write that novel.
How to do it, though? That’s the question. Deseat.me is the answer: created by Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck, all you do is enter your Gmail and it’ll show you (pretty much) everywhere on the internet that your info is currently being held.
“Privacy and data security is something we regard as extremely important. In fact, its our number one focus from beginning to end. Thats [sic] why we built it to run on your computer. So basically the only thing you're telling us is what accounts you want to delete. Thats [sic] it, and since we use Googles OAuth protocol we don't have access to any of your login information,” says the website’s copy.
The website lets you see all of the websites you're signed up to or have accounts for and asks if you'd like to delete them or unsubscribe. Simple as that. No begging pop-up windows. No emotional manipulation via coding.
No myriad deactivation applications. Click, delete, gone. Ish. It only works for things you’ve signed up for with that particular email – so yeah, that Geocities website you made about your Year 8 emo band is probably still up there somewhere – so it’s still fairly limited right now.
Plus, I mean, nobody can really know how deep all the information we were so happy to share back in 2014 has gotten, so who knows if it’ll never really be gone but as far as deleting a few juicy layers of info – down to the… *googles* eluviation layer, just above the internet’s regolith and bedrock – then this looks like a pretty good bet.
