Disappearing from the internet

Hey all -

I wanted to start a thread where we can all share tips and tricks for disappearing off the internet, and to protect yourself going forward with our socialist overlords. I think a simple thing we all have to accept, myself in particular, is that we don't have to share every thought that enters our brain with the public. Not everyone needs to know what we are thinking at every second, and we don't need "social credit", "upvotes", or "likes." What we need is assurance that we will be able to provide for our families without being sent to the gulags for "wrong think", or being unemployable because we were part of the 75,000,000 Americans that supported Trump. I absolutely thank Araysar for getting me started down this pathway with ProtonMail.

First and foremost, people should consider deleting all social media, including but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. What really is the point of engaging with idiots on that website? It just is exposing you to the risk of saying something that offends someone and before you know it, you are doxxed. Fuck it. You aren't changing opinions or changing the world. Delete that shit!

Facebook:

How do I permanently delete my account?
Before deleting your account, you may want to log in and download a copy of your information (like your photos and posts) from Facebook, and a copy of your Oculus information if you use your Facebook account to log in to Oculus. After your account has been deleted, you won't be able to retrieve anything you've added.
To permanently delete your account:
Click in the top right of Facebook. 

Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings. 

Click Your Facebook Information in the left column.
Click Deactivation and Deletion.
Choose Permanently Delete Account, then click Continue to Account Deletion.
Click Delete Account, enter your password and then click Continue.



Twitter:
How to delete Twitter on desktop:
Click on your profile icon in the top right hand corner, then select "Settings and Privacy."
In the "Account" tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Deactivate Your Account."
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Deactivate."



Instagram:
To request the permanent deletion of your account:

Before deleting your account, you may want to log in and download a copy of your information (like your photos and posts) from Instagram. After your account has been deleted, you will not have access to Instagram’s Data Download tool.

Go to the Delete Your Account page from a mobile browser or computer. If you're not logged into Instagram on the web, you'll be asked to log in first. You can't delete your account from within the Instagram app.
Select an option from the dropdown menu next to Why are you deleting your account? and re-enter your password. The option to permanently delete your account will only appear after you've selected a reason from the menu.
Click or tap Permanently delete my account.



Reddit:

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Consider where you are hosting your email. Hotmail? Microsoft hasn't fucked up too bad yet, as far as I know, but I know someone will correct me so please read replies below. Gmail? Google is evil. You need to get off YouTube, Gmail, etc. AOL? You're just retarded.

It seems to be universally agreed upon at this point that ProtonMail is your best bet for email. It's hosted out of Switzerland, and uses end to end encryption.

Sign up for it here: Secure email: ProtonMail is free encrypted email.
Some tips:
- Can import your old Gmail and other services mail so that you don't lose years of email
- While transitioning, helpful to have your old email forward to your Protonmail account, so that you don't have to log in to your old email ever again. When you get important emails from companies you do business with, you can log into those companies and update your email to your new ProtonMail address.

A few caveats:
- This is encrypted email. So if you use Outlook, etc, you need to download the "Protonmail Bridge" to serve as a go-between from ProtonMail's servers and your email client. It's a one time setup, takes a few minutes, and then done forever.
- For your smart phone, you can *only* access ProtonMail via its web client or its phone app. You cannot use the built in mail program on your cellphone. This is, again, because the email is encrypted.

Also, if you use their webclient, you can goto beta.protonmail.com to get an early look at their new look.
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Consider joining a service like DeleteMe: Remove Personal Info from Google - DeleteMe
You can do all of this manually, and they even tell you how, but for $10/mo they will keep you deleted off all of those spam sites that give our your name and address, phone number, supposed net worth, etc.


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Another security issue: If you participate in multiple forums on the internet, always sign up with a burner email (Yahoo!, ProtonMail, Gmail, whoever), and also don't use the same username and/or avatar picture. There are cases of people being linked between forums and getting doxxed because they used the same username and avatar. Also, don't get goaded into giving up your personal information, I wouldn't even admit what state you live in. Don't post pics that can identify anything about you, your face, a loved ones face or name, what city or state you are in, or anything else. If your'e losing internet credit, lol, just make a new account and move on. People call this OPSEC (operations security). Don't give up your privacy!


-- That's all I have for now. PLEASE share any tips you have, or ideas you have. And if I got something wrong, PLEASE correct me, so we can all be one the same page as much as possible for protecting ourselves going forward.

Also:

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What WhatsApp has access to on their servers​

I just downloaded and explored my WhatsApp data report. They have access to the following information:

1. Whether you can pay for services (probably only valid in certain regions)
2. Your status (obviously)
3. The list of groups you have joined
4. Your contacts' phone numbers (who are on WhatsApp)
5. Your profile picture
6. Your profile name (shown to non-contacts, I believe)
7. Your phone number
8. Request and generation time of the report

The bolded stuff is problematic because they are going to be sharing that across the rest of their platform (e.g. Messenger, Facebook, Instagram), which means they can link your WhatsApp contacts to your Messenger contacts. This could lead to, for example, suggesting certain contacts on Messenger (or on WhatsApp) based on the information gleaned from the other service and effectively forming a combined social graph across all of their services.
For example, right now, I have a WhatsApp account and a Messenger account (created using my phone number when I deleted my Facebook account). Because of this, they can easily link my WhatsApp account to my Messenger account and merge my social graphs, despite the fact that I moved some people from Messenger to WhatsApp precisely because those social graphs were supposed to be kept separate (and because I felt that it was an easier sell at the time than Signal due to having far fewer people on Signal).
I encourage everyone else here who has these services (especially people who have left Facebook but have these other services) to generate their data reports from Messenger and WhatsApp and compare them to determine which will learn more from the other.
I think it's also important here to step back and realize that Signal is fighting an uphill battle by attempting to provide similar features without having direct access to this stuff. The fact that Signal now has parity with respect to group features (for example) without having direct access to your list of groups is amazing (obviously they need to store some stuff server-side to provide these features, but that doesn't mean they need to store it in plain-text, which is clearly effectively what WhatsApp does). The same is true of the fact that they don't store contacts in unencrypted form (again, clearly unlike WhatsApp here).
I get that people are salty about Signal requiring phone numbers for sign-up, and yes, Signal isn't suitable for anonymous communication. But I hope everyone can appreciate the strides Signal has made in providing feature parity with stuff like WhatsApp while still knowing as little about us as possible.
[Edit] Added a clarification that only contacts who are on WhatsApp are stored on their server (as far as I can tell by looking at the report).
Note: Reposted after it was removed for a non-descriptive title, since the information is (I believe) important. Please let me know if this is still problematic /u/trai_dep.
[Edit 2] I just revoked WhatsApp's access to my contacts and am regenerating the report. I'm curious if the contacts field will be blank or if there is a lag time. I will update the post when I get the new report (in 3 days).

kroenen said:

Thank you Falxy-US for your excellent thread start!
Anyone know of a VPN service provider that is actually safe to use, or are they all in cahoots with the enemy?

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ProtonMail actually has a VPN tool with it too that I think is good. Araysar is using it and is getting pretty decent throughput with it.

to be honest I’ve never used one. Does it just essentially make your IP for all internet activity?

GuardianX said:

Lets be perfectly transparent, you cannot fully delete all your data from these sites. They "Deactivate" your account when you request deletion in most cases. It can nearly always be undone.

Changing your past posts to other things is a good start, but even then places that keep historical backups will maintain what it used to be.

Put it this way, we had a case where a juror was posting details about a case he was sitting in to his facebook page, talking about how he could gouge his employer or drag the case on for "Extra money" the court received this information and then he deleted everything. Didn't matter, we sent a request to facebook and they sent us all the posts in question.

If your information is there and you ever had thoughts about removing it, good fucking luck...

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I was reading about that with the Parler hack. Like “deleted” content is flagged to be invisible but still exists in the database. Fucking insane.

GuardianX said:

Say you have an exploitation ring that uploads and deletes their stuff after seconds on the platform, long enough for members to record the information / download it but not long enough for a human to verify before it poofs. It allows them to observe issues and react to them, as well as supposedly outright deleting things supposedly has major issues on places like facebook.

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I think I read somewhere a lot of people use gmail for shit like that. Like they will share an account, so you can log in, you could send illegal shit to yourself, so it's all kept in there, but not really distributing it.

Big Phoenix said:

While obviously deleting doesnt really do anything against the government with a warrant, it still great for stopping trolls, doxxers and anyone else trying to hunt you down. Though one thing to keep in mind is it takes time for changes to propagate as search engines often act like quasi archives of data, returning old info for pages. I ran into this when I discovered my name was linked to an obvious search someone would run on me. Took 2-3 weeks for Google's search to reflect the change I made.

IMO best security practice is obfuscation. Use usernames that have nothing to do with who you are and more importantly when searched return endless results of gibberish not related to you. Use comic book heroes when you dont read, care or watch anything comic related. To go along with that never reuse usernames across the web.

Second layer of obfuscation is purposely posting incorrect information about yourself. Say you live in the wrong city, went to the wrong highschool are older or younger than you actually are etc. Makes it harder to connect dots and pinpoint you are the person that is being looked for.

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Thank you, this is a great idea. You mean like make your username "Superman01a" or something, because that will bring up a million results and be almost impossible to even get a hit for, like, a web forum? And of course sign up to whatever forum with a burner email.

And great idea for the disinformation. I can tell you for sure that it's really cold in Montana right now! Freezing when I go outside!

Foler said:

Don't expect to ever fully delete yourself from the internet. Something key you're missing is sowing disinformation. I'd start drumming on some disinfo campaigns and regularly tend to them to build their presence and story.

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Thank you, this is a great idea!

dizzie said:

ProtonMails VPN keeps logs. Don't use a VPN that keeps logs folks.

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I looked into this, this is what they said:


"
ProtonVPN respects its users’ privacy and enforces a no-logs policy. This means your VPN connections remain private and we do not store information about your connections or the websites you visit.

For the purpose of securing your account and making sure it’s you who is signing in, we store a single timestamp of your accounts most recent login. Again, we do not store any information about where you signed in from or how long you were logged in."

OhSeven said:

Funny, related anecdote. When I got my new phone I had the rep uninstall facebook and other social media apps from the phone before I allowed the transferring of my contacts and data to the new phone. Now I'd say 75% of the ads I get on my phone are for facebook.

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Do you remember how bad Windows computers were? All the shit ware that would come installed, and like if you just opened your computer up and put it on the internet it would get hacked in like minutes or something if you didnt have a firewall??