Digital Oil Spill: How to Clean Up Your Online Footprint
Do some spring cleaning and delete your accounts when you're no longer using a website or platform.
We're all guilty of digital pollution on the web. But we can start by cleaning up our online footprint by deleting our accounts when we're no longer using a website or platform. Does it really make a difference? Yes, because it prevents unnecessary data from piling up and causing pollution on computer hardware.
We all love to try new things, attempt new experiences, and use new tools. On the Web, it's very simple, an email address or Facebook account is enough to create your account in less than 5 seconds on the latest trendy platform.
You test the new photo filters, some effects, it's pretty cool. Until a feature doesn't work quite as you imagined. The interface doesn't suit you, the buttons are too small, the effect you dreamed of is not available. Then you get bored, and you move on.
Waste by the roadside
Every time you sign up for a platform and leave without closing your account, it's as if you were leaving a bag filled with documents containing traces of your passage by the side of the road. This used bag will remain there until the platform closes. In many years ...
This bag contains all the information you have entered. Not to mention the ones that were automatically collected by the platform.
For example: your Facebook profile picture, your email address, the date you created your account, the hours you logged in, the buttons you clicked on ...
A digital spring cleaning
Do you have any idea of all the data you are accumulating on servers? As for me, I cannot precisely evaluate the volume. But I know it's very significant. To reduce it to a minimum, I force myself to delete my account every time a platform doesn't suit me.
After reading this article, take a few minutes: think about the last platform on which you never returned. And delete your account. Many servers and hard drives will thank you!
