WhaleSlide’s Data Detox — Day 1
The start of a new year is a great time to think about what you would like to achieve going forwards, and make any changes to your life you feel may be necessary. Maybe you’ll start a new hobby or commit to eating more vegetables, but how many of us have considered detoxing our online life, which can get just as cluttered as our ‘real’ lives? Tune in every day this week for simple tips on how to help detoxify your digital life, inspired by our recent trip to the Glass Room exhibition.
Where to start?
Before you do anything, you need to know what exactly exists online as part of your digital footprint, and what other people see when they search for you (remember that old MySpace account from 2005? It’s probably time to get rid). To get a complete picture of this, open your browser, log out of your social media, e-mail and any other accounts, and clear your browser history and cookies. We know that deleting all of this information might seem a little daunting, but it’s the only way you will be able to search for yourself and see the results as another person looking you up.
Once all of your history has been cleared, go to a search engine (we suggest trying multiple search engines, including Whaleslide!) and search your name, with any additional identifying information if your name is particularly common or is shared with a brand (e.g. Ted Baker). Check out the results but don’t forget to check the images to see what pictures appear in the search — are any of them potentially embarrassing, or something you wouldn’t want the world to associate with you?
The Detox
Now for the detox — getting rid of the stuff you don’t want people to see. For images, consider where the image is being hosted. If it’s an account you have control over, such as a social media account, you can remove it yourself or adjust your privacy settings so that such images won’t show up in an internet search. What about any images you may not have control over? There are several options available here. If it’s on somebody else’s social media account, you can either ask them to untag you or take it down, or flag it with the social media platform for removal. If all of the above options have failed and it’s something you really don’t want to be seen by the general public, you can ask search engines such as Google to omit information for search results thanks to the “right to be forgotten” legislation. A webform for this is available here.
Even after successfully completing all of these steps, it’s worth being aware that images or information you have tried to banish forever may still exist on other people’s devices/accounts, in the Cloud, or on account backups. As we’re increasingly finding with the digital world, once something is put out there, it’s very hard to make it disappear completely. In future, it’s best to try to keep information and pictures completely private in the first place to avoid having to undertake a retrospective clean up. However, we do realise that that’s much easier said than done (we all have that one mate who’s uploaded a pic of you at your absolute worst) and at Whaleslide we’re always here to help you with online privacy.
That’s it for Day 1 of our Data Detox Series — tune in tomorrow for Day 2 and let us know how you’re getting on by sharing and tweeting with the hashtag #WhaleslideDataDetox!
