Inspired by other people, I recently started deleting accounts from websites and services I no longer use, trying to reduce my social fingerprint on the internet. This was an extremely hard process, since over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of accounts everywhere, from services I’ve previously used and since dropped, to services where I only created an account to test it out.

I used a website called KnowEm to base myself of the services currently available. I know it’s not this website’s original purpose, but that I used it for.

Over this process, I’ve came across three types of sites, the good, which have a simple way of removing our account, for exemple clicking a link, the bad, which make you contact their technical support to remove your account and the ugly, which simply don’t allow you to remove your account. I will next list some of these websites and explain the process I had to take to remove my account.

The Good:

In this list we can find the majority of websites and services, like Delicious, Weebly, Dailymotion, Slideshare, etc. We can simply click a link and we can have our account removed. This is, for me, the gold standard, that should be used by everyone.

The Bad:

In this listing we include sites that require us to contact their customer support in order to remove our account. It’s a more lengthy process but after a couple of days it gets done. They include Digg, C|net, Geocaching.com and SAPO.

The Ugly:

In this section I include the worst of the worst. They are the services that simply don’t allow for account removal and also the ones that didn’t respond to my account removal requests. In the first category I  can list Miro Guide, they don’t allow for account removal. In the second category there’s Technorati, which simply ignored my account removal requests. For shame…

UPDATE: DeviantArt now allows you to remove your account. The only thing that is not removed are commentaries… 

So, I’ve been using Go Daddy for a few years now, mainly for my domain registering. It’s been a somewhat good service, despite the fact that the website is somewhat difficult to use. When you buy a domain there the site takes you to several pages where they bombard you with other offers that personally I have no interest in. But I kinda stuck with the service, mostly because of laziness and the fact that the domains were already registered there.

I know Go Daddy’s founder is kind of a douche bag and that became apparent last year with the shooting elephants debacle. It almost made me switch services immediately but, again due to laziness, I’ve set myself the goal of only changing when the domain was expiring.

That changed with the SOPA controversy. It was kind of the last straw. I’ve changed all my personal domains from Go Daddy, leaving there only the ones I don’t want anymore and will let them expire and two that I’ve registered to other people.

I’ve switched to an European company, Gandi, and I have to say, I’m quite satisfied with the service. Not only it’s a “no bullshit” service, they also support Free Software Projects, like Gnome, Debian and VideoLAN, but also Free Culture Organizations, like the EFF and Creative Commons and Human and Animal Rights NGOs, like the WWF and FIDH. That was a plus, and I’m glad I’ve changed to Gandi.