One-A-Day Account Deletion Challenge

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It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves when thinking about privacy - fancy tech solutions to complex tech problems, so in the spirit of minimalism I am inviting others to join in a back-to-basics unused/unneeded account deletion process. When you delete an account, respond to this post and let others what you got rid of.

I’ll go first! Following the essential advice in PG, I wrote to an anti-virus software company I used to be a customer of and claimed my rights as an EEA resident to have my personal data erased.

If you too are an EEA resident, please use the following text if you like:

Dear Data Protection Officer,

I am writing to exercise my right to erasure, also known as the “right to be forgotten,” as specified in Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), I request that you delete all personal data related to me that is in your possession and under your control.

I understand that this right is not absolute and that there may be certain exceptions, such as when the processing of the personal data is necessary for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information, for compliance with a legal obligation, or for public interest reasons. However, I believe that the processing of my personal data does not fall under any of these exceptions.

To the best of my knowledge, the personal data that I would like to be erased includes:

[List or describe the specific data you want to be erased]

I understand that this request may impact the functionality of certain services or my ability to access my account, but I believe that the right to erasure outweighs these concerns.

Please acknowledge receipt of this request and provide an estimated timeframe for the deletion of my personal data. I would also appreciate it if you could confirm that the data has been deleted once the process is complete.

I look forward to your prompt attention to this matter and trust that you will respect my rights under the GDPR.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

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I have been getting a lot of pings about different housing information websites having my data (not a surprise, since I own a home). I rarely have anything good to say about the process but the support team at cluster maps was beyond helpful.

Thank you for reaching out. We’re happy to assist you with removing your information. We have removed both the address, redacted, and the name of the residents, including redacted.

This information is no longer available on our website. Unfortunately, we can’t control how long search engines keep something in their caches. We realize that this is very important to you. We have submitted our request to Google to have this information removed from the search results. You can submit your request here:

Refresh outdated content - Google Search Help

We’ve also submitted our request to Bing. You can submit your request to Bing here: Bing Webmaster Tools

Due to name variations like nicknames (e.g. Elizabeth, Beth, Liz, Lizzy, Eliza, Beth, Betsy, Betty, Ellie, Elsie, Lisa, Liza, Libby, Liddy, and more), maiden names, and names that have legally changed, there may be additional listings that relate to you. If you want to remove additional listings or addresses, please contact us. For faster removal, provide the addresses you want removed from our site. We’ll delete the specified addresses, along with associated names and phone numbers.

Feel free to reply back if you need anything else, we will be happy to help you.

P.S. We have an opt out functionality. Open the page with information you wish to have removed, scroll the page down and click on the Remove My Info link. You can also email us a direct link to the information you wish to have removed. We’ll delete it.

P.P.S. You can ask Google to remove personally identifiable information about yourself from its search results: Remove personally identifiable info or doxxing content from Google Search - Google Search Help You can submit a request to remove content from Bing here: Privacy support and requests

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I find it’s better to be more assertive. I have had companies change their deletion policies after I insisted they fulfil my request within 30 days as is their obligation (special circumstances not withstanding).

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The idea of ‘one per day’ is good, but if people post here every day with information about which account they deleted, they would be giving away a lot of information about themselves.

You could build a profile on someone over time just by them listing their former accounts like that.

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Not a deletion this time - but overwriting some data and using an email alias.