Ask HN: What Are the Best Current Methods to Delete Yourself from the Internet?
I have a fairly unique name.  Anyway 5 years ago I was on a date, met the girl online.  She started asking me about places I had lived... and she just knew way too much about me.  She confessed she had paid like $20 to look me up on one of those extended search services before the date.  There was no second date.  Totally creeped me out... but I did get the name of the service she used, and when I got home I ran a search on myself to see what all was there.<p>What&#x27;s worse than all the information being out there, or parallel I guess, is that the shitty service had a bunch of information wrong.  It said I lived in a state where I co-signed a lease for my sister (and since I have the same last name as my sister the service drew the conclusion we were married), it said that I still owned a home in yet another state (I had sold it years before)...  It also returned my year-by-year income (most of which was fairly accurate), court records (even from when I was a little kid showing up at my parents&#x27; divorce hearing), and the exact amount I still owed on my house.  No clue how they got all that shit.<p>Around that time I went looking for ways to purge it all, I stumbled across this post:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;j1mit&#x2F;how_to_remove_yourself_from_all_background_check&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;j1mit&#x2F;how_to_re...</a><p>I filled out every opt-out form I could find.<p>Here we are, 5 years later... I can say... a few less scammy sites show up when you search for me... but on the whole not really much impact.  A bunch of information these sites have is still wrong, and a lot of the sites... even if you go through all the trouble of opting out... they only honor the opt-out for a year.<p>I asked my lawyer if there was a way, how do celebrities and such keep their records out of these people&#x27;s hands... and his response was, &quot;You probably have to contact each site and pay then to take you off...&quot;  At which point I decided to cheer if anyone ever fire-bombed the offices of Radaris or Spokeo or Yatedo or any of the other shit-information sites.<p>We need laws that make it legal for us to all kick the CEO of these companies in the nuts -- one good solid kick each.  Freedom of information, all that... necessary for democracy... and it&#x27;s just a short hop from there over to aggregation services... but we should at least ensure that people who want to profit off eroding privacy shouldn&#x27;t be able to reproduce.<p>Seems like there was an update to that post.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;31u84n&#x2F;how_to_remove_yourself_from_most_background_check&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;technology&#x2F;comments&#x2F;31u84n&#x2F;how_to_r...</a>