Terms of Service

I looked into the cleansing your digital identity hyperlinks and decided to use see what information of mine was available through data brokers. I then spent the next couple hours looking through different sites becoming more and more disturbed that all these websites had my home address and phone numbers listed, so I spent a good amount of the afternoon sending in requests to remove my information from their platforms. Overall it was a pretty surreal experience seeing how much data is aggregated online for sale to anyone. I also looked into ‘justdeleteme’, a free online service showing how to delete different online accounts, which I also went through, finding old accounts to purge.

Later on I also looked through the ToS’s of several online platforms I use regularly, such as Twitch and Instagram. In most cases after having read the ToS, I opted to delete my accounts as I disagreed with the way my data could be used/the lack of say I had in how it could be used. From Instagram’s data policy page, they state that they collect location information.

“Location-related information: We use location-related information-such as your current location, where you live, the places you like to go, and the businesses and people you’re near-to provide, personalize and improve our Products, including ads, for you and others. Location-related information can be based on things like precise device location (if you’ve allowed us to collect it), IP addresses, and information from your and others’ use of Facebook Products (such as check-ins or events you attend).”

To me this is too much of an invasion of my privacy in return for the benefit of using their service. I like using Instagram to keep up with different pages and friends, but not if that allows Instagram to be able to see where I live, where I go, and other details that I don’t believe are relevant to me using their service.