How can I ditch my online identity?

August 16, 2009 8:59 PM

I've been trying to "disappear" on the internet for a while now, but every now and then I realize I've linked myself back to something I regret saying online or even online profiles which are benign but still don't want linked to me. What can I do to "lose my identity" online to the point of being completely disjoint from my past?

For about a year now I've been systematically cutting out as much of my online identity as possible. I had one main handle which was also my e-mail address. Slowly, over the year, I went through every Google result that came up for my handle and removed all my posts and deleted my accounts (where possible... some still remain). I am reasonably happy about that, because now I just need to finally ditch the e-mail address and I can't be linked back to it.

However, I occasionally slip up. I recently discovered that a hosting site (think imageshack) I've been using links me back to some stupid comments I made on a website, which further links me back to my old handle! Obviously I need to ditch that hosting account, but it's these kind of slip-ups that I want to avoid.

Call me crazy, but I also feel like an enthusiastic individual could link me to posts that I've made on sites relevant to my interests just by my grammar patterns. I know I'm going to get a "see a therapist" for that one, but I feel like my writing style is pretty clunky and easy to notice. I would like to change my writing style (and I try to when I know I don't want to be linked to something, like this post) but I'm not particularly talented that way.

Long question short: If you've ever been very involved in the internet, and found you needed to lose every association with your online handle, what steps did you take? My objective is to have no links to anything from my name or e-mail address, and I don't want my past to bubble up when I think it's all gone.

In case you're wondering, I've done nothing illegal. I just really want to clear out the online personality I've accumulated over the years and start from zero again. It's... refreshing.

posted by anonymous to technology (9 comments total)

Do you want to do this for real life reasons? Purging stupid internet tricks from your real name is a challenge, but it seems that you've found a way to manage it. You don't seem so interested in the real life stuff though; you want to delete an online identity in favour of a new one? It's pretty easy to start up a new online persona that has no links to an old one. Unless you want to get deep into the same places you used to be deep into, making friends with the same people and hoping they're none the wiser. I don't recommend that. Given that you think someone would recognize your grammar patterns makes me think that's what you're up to. It's not a good idea. You will be found out.
posted by Hildegarde at 9:12 PM on August 16

There are search engines other than google, and archives other than archive.org. It probably isn't possible for you to "disappear" completely, and it certainly isn't possible for you to be absolutely certain you have done so.
posted by finite at 9:18 PM on August 16 [1 favorite]

To a certain extent, yes you can 'disappear' - but anything that resides on servers has redundant back-ups. Anything you produced may have been copied and saved on someone's personal computer, hidden from any spider search. The searches for your name will continually keep going down as your efforts continue, but recognize that you'll always be out there in some way.

If you want to be ambitious about it, make darn sure anything you write about yourself in the future is something consciously written (e.g. not drunk or high) no pictures taken of you you wouldn't want the world to see, and the like. Put out some good stuff - anything found from your past life can (possibly) be dismissed as being from a long time ago...
posted by chrisinseoul at 10:06 PM on August 16

For the most part I use a completely different user name and even often a different email address for every site I belong to.

I think that people are insanely casual about posting information on the internet. I don't think that the threat is from what people would find through Google now, for the most part, it's what the consequences will be twenty years from now when the entire internet as it is today, plus possibly things like Google Web History and all sorts of stuff that's private now, all fits on a single disc or hard drive or whatever or can be downloaded from a warez site in a blip, and the average computer user, not just Google, has access to intelligent automated programs that can churn through all the data and cross-reference things from all of the sites you've ever been to all at once.

Or maybe it's in fifty years or seventy years that happens but as long as it happens during your lifetime it could be a problem. It'll be great for anthropologists but bad if you need to get a home loan. Or maybe the iPhone of 2059 will automatically photograph the face of every person you meet from where it sits in your shirt pocket and call up all of that data, everything there is to know about the person you're talking to at your fingertips.
posted by XMLicious at 11:14 PM on August 16 [4 favorites]

I get that you want a fresh start, I really do, but I think with this one there's really only so far you can go with erasing the past. What if, instead of trying to cover all your tracks, you put some energy towards these two things...

1. Putting some time and distance between you today and the past you. That is to say, moving forward, have a new presence that is reflective of who you want to be and have that presence be not like your old you. Bury those bad comments with a body of work that is positive and helpful. The more time you spend doing this, the more disconnected your presence today will be from the bad comments you made 1, 2, 10 years ago. If something comes up, it will be easy to see why you don't associate with that identity anymore, and it will be really clear to others that this is not who you are today.

2. Making a conscious effort to accept that some things will be out there no matter what. The sooner you reconcile and accept that there were things you said and did that you don't approve of now, the easier it will be to let that go. You'll be able to brush it off and say, 'oh, that. Yeah, I've changed a lot since then.' You won't feel like you have to prove you've changed if you just accept your unhappiness about the mess you've made.

I've been in your shoes, worried that some of the stupid stuff I blogged in the past will haunt me, or that somebody will read something I wrote about them, or an employer won't hire me because they see how immature I am online, whatever. For me, it helps to remember that Golda Meir quote: "Don't be humble, you're not that great." Basically, nobody cares. It all comes back to junior high...everybody is so worried about how they look that nobody is paying attention to how others really look.

So, really, just accept that you said all those stupid things and acted a fool online, let it go, and focus on being awesome. Remembering that the more awesome you put out there, the smaller and more forgivable the stupid stuff will become.

I'm writing all this based on the premise that the identity that you're trying to get past is fairly typical bad online behavior and not anything that is significantly legally or morally incriminating. Also assuming that you aren't entering into some proposition soon that would prompt people to search for you or your past identities.
posted by iamkimiam at 12:05 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]

The sands of time wash us all clean. In other words, as there's more and more detritus and stuff on the Internet, the stuff that was there gets piled beneath.

Of course, you could proactively hasten the process by:

- using said online identity and posting a shedload of banal content that nobody will read. Thus burying the search engine results
- turn it into a spam central site. Encourage people to post using that online ID and spam. Spam blockers will block you, effectively rendering that online ID invisible.
posted by almostwitty at 2:10 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]

almostwitty, that is a great idea, instead of trying to hide, clog the channel with noise.
posted by psycho-alchemy at 2:23 AM on August 17 [1 favorite]

One strategy is to join a high profile mailing list or board with your real name and just post lots of stuff like something related to your field or whatever. When people do google you they'll see 100 pages of Joe Smith posting tips on Chili cooking instead of angry rants against the pope/illuminati/lizard people collective.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:36 AM on August 17 [2 favorites]

The problem with the "hide it with noise" approach is that it really won't work against anyone who actually knows how to use Google.

Consider things like the Givewell affair. That guy was tracked down and exposed even though he was using completely different user names, simply because he was talking about approximately similar subject matter across many different sites during the same time frame.

And that was done by humans. Things like Google Web History are put together from a much vaster sea of raw data than the intensively cleaned-up and indexed version of the internet that you can see through the search engine, and are assembled by automated data mining processes.

But if you're just worried about the social implications of someone tracking you down, I would agree with others and say you should just accept it and shrug it off.
posted by XMLicious at 2:45 PM on August 17