Deleting online services you no longer want or need, the easy way
How often have you though “I wish there was one centralized place I could go to delete all the online services I no longer want”? I sure have. Or maybe you’ve tried to find a way but the link or process is so well hidden that you gave up. Then as I’m reading some news this morning I find an article that mentioned a website that does just what we need; JustDelete.me
The concept is a simple one yet noone has though of actually building it until now. “JustDelete.me aims to be a directory of urls to enable you to easily delete your account from web services.” Yup, that’s it and that’s all we want. All services are color coded:
- Green: Simple process
- Yellow: Some extra steps involved
- Red: Cannot be fully deleted without contacting customer services
- Black: Cannot be deleted
Accounts you have to services you no longer use or maybe even forgot about (really, who remembers MySpace?) can be a potential security and privacy hazard. Delete unused accounts, next time LinkedIn or Pinterest gets hacked your user information won’t be amongst the spoils. If you have banned Google from your home you may see mixed results with the search field, ‘fonts.googleapis.com’ is contacted and if blocked the field may not load or disappears when the page is refreshed. Use your browser’s search feature instead if you experience this, just as easy. So, go have a look and try it. Don’t forget to bookmark the page, more services are added over time (a bunch were added as I wrote this) so it’s definitely a good resource. Have a site that’s not listed? Robb Lewis, who developer of the site with the help of Ed Poole, will gladly take your suggestions.
Links:
JustDelete.me
Robb Lewis, developer
Ed Poole, designer
Sometimes with all of the privacy issues it’s tempting to just disappear from the radar. But with technology today it’s hard to go completely
I am a bit troubled that the links to JustDelete.me lead to http://backgroundchecks.org/justdeleteme/. So far so good, but the parent site is more troublesome. The headliner for backgroundchecks.org is a very prominent “Start Your Records Search.” This, in turn, leads to https://www.instantcheckmate.com. This site seems to be dedicated to getting out money and harvesting email addresses for targeted spam. See https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/instantcheckmate.com. A site that purports to help make us MORE safe seems to take us to a site that is designed to make us LESS safe.
Definitely curious. I’ll look into this and see if it warrants a follow up article. That said justdelete.me is not designed to help us be more safe, it just offers handy shortcuts to help users close an account.