CONSIDER PURGING FORGOTTEN SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS
Internet is riddled with social media accounts, dating apps
NEW YORK» The internet is riddled with longforgotten accounts on social media, dating apps and various shopping sites used once or twice. Sure, you should delete all those unused logins and passwords. And eat your vegetables. And go to the gym.
But is it even possible to delete your zombie online footprints — or worth your time to do so?
Earlier this month, a littleused social network notified its few users that it will soon shut down. No, not Google Plus; that came five days later, following the disclosure of a bug that exposed data on a halfmillion people. The earlier shutdown involved Path, created by a former Facebook employee in 2010 as an alternative to Facebook.
It might not seem like a big deal to have these accounts linger. But with hacking in the news constantly, including a breach affecting nearly 30 million Facebook accounts, you might not want all that data sitting around.
Take dating apps such as Tinder, long after you found a steady partner or gave up on finding one. You might have deleted Tinder from your phone, but the ghost of your Tinder account is still out there.
Or consider Yahoo. Long after many people stopped using it, Yahoo in 2016 suffered the biggest publicly disclosed hack in history, exposing the names, email addresses, birthdates and other information from 3 billion active and dormant accounts. This sort of information is a gold mine for malicious actors looking to steal identities and gain access to financial accounts.
It’s wise to set aside a time each year — maybe after you do your taxes or right after the holidays — to manage old accounts, said Theresa Payton, who runs the security consulting company Fortalice Solutions and served under President George W. Bush as White House chief information officer.
For starters, visit haveibeenpwned.com. This popular tool lets you enter your email addresses and check if it has been compromised in a data breach. Ideally, the attacked company should have notified you already, but that’s not guaranteed. Change passwords and close accounts you don’t need.
You might also check justdeleteme.xyx, which Payton said could help navigate the “complexities of saying goodbye.”