Reduce your digital footprint with the largest Account Deletion Directory
Deleting old accounts is a frustrating experience, but at Yorba, we find all your old accounts so you can easily delete them, and give you in-depth deletion info in an expanding Account Deletion Directory with 10,700+ unique platforms (and growing!). How long would it take you to identify and delete all those accounts on your own?
What is a digital footprint?
“Digital Footprint” is a term referring to all of the activities, data, interactions, and/or relationships across the internet that can be associated with your unique identity. In essence, it’s the sum total of everything you do and have done online.
The larger your digital footprint, the less privacy you have. The larger your digital footprint, the more inroads and potentially vulnerabilities there are for bad actors online to compromise your security. The larger your digital footprint, the less control you have over how and where your personal information appears on the internet.
The big-picture goal of Yorba is to help you make your digital footprint as small as possible. Protecting your digital footprint starts with finding and deleting accounts.
We define “Account” to mean any online entity with whom you have an enduring online relationship (whether that be a user profile you log in to, recurring subscription fee you pay, or automated mailing list that sends you emails). That entity might be a business, an organization, a school, a government agency–essentially, any digital service that uses some sort of CRM and has you in their system.
Why is it so hard to delete old accounts?
If you’ve ever tried to delete even a single old account, you understand the unique torture that comes along with it. Many reporters have tried–and tracked–just how challenging it can be.
In order to delete accounts, you have to first remember the account exists, go to the site, try to find their terms and conditions or privacy policy pages, figure out where and how to delete an account, and then finish the process.
Some vendors will delete inactive accounts, while others require you to email them directly to delete an account. The best ones have an account deletion button, but since most vendors don’t want you to delete your account, they’ll make it really hard to find.
Your personal data is the most important piece of information a vendor has about you. Vendors purchase this data in order to sell you things. Personal data can be anything from your Social Security Number to your email address, and the types of information vendors collect will vary.
X, formerly known as Twitter, for example, collects your basic account information such as your display name, password, email address, phone number, birthday, display language, and single-sign-on information. They also collect your X activity such as date of post, what version of X you’re using, the communities you’re part of, your broadcasts viewing history, your IP address and browser type, your device settings such as battery level (why the heck do they need this?), memory, and apps installed, to name a few.
That’s a whole lot of data for one platform.
According to Clario, a cybersecurity app, Meta is even worse–collecting “79.74% of data they can legally collect.” They go beyond collecting simple account information to collect things like your “height, weight, and sexual orientation.” But once you share that data, most vendors don’t just keep it to themselves. They usually share and sell that data for–you guessed it–lots of money.
The only way to remove your accounts–and your data–is to delete your account. Though, keep in mind, with some vendors like Meta, it may take “up to 90 days…for your data to be deleted.” And that’s not the last of it. Some of your information will have to be removed separately and will require you to connect with their support team in order to get it deleted. That’s just if you have access to the account you want to delete. What happens if you don’t have that info saved and don’t even remember signing up?
Yorba finds and lets you delete old accounts easily
In addition to helping you track, view, delete, and manage old accounts, Yorba hosts one of the most extensive Account Deletion Directories in existence. If you want to try and do it yourself, give it a look.
How the ADD works
The Account Deletion Directory (or ADD) is the largest account deletion directory in existence–it currently covers over 75% of all online website traffic, and it makes it easy for you to get instructions on how to delete accounts you may have forgotten about. Instead of having to read through every single privacy policy, company page, and deletion info–or worse–struggle to find it at all, we pulled it together for you.
The ADD goes beyond simply pulling in instructions, though. It categorizes vendors based on their level of deletion difficulty, provides a direct link to their contact email, support center, and phone support info, if available. It also provides direct deletion links so you can simply click to log in and delete your account.
Yorba was made for the community, and it also relies on the community to continuously improve, so it’s constantly updated with real-time info submitted by community members.
If you’re looking to escape the internet forever, or just tighten security around all your accounts, the ADD is going to become your best friend.
If you want to go a step further by aggregating and deleting those unnecessary accounts easily, join Yorba and simplify your digital footprint with our Public Beta.
