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Need to clean up what you’ve been up to online? That wasn’t meant to sound like a loaded question, we promise, but a Swedish website may be able to help.
Deseat.me offers you the ability to erase parts of your presence online simply by clicking a button.
The website does this by accessing your Google account and identifying the websites you have signed up to through the account. It can then offer you a list of the sites such as Facebook, Vine or Pinterest, that you are subscribed to.
From these you can pick and choose which you would like to delete entirely, unsubscribe or keep.
There are currently limitations to the site, of course. It can only find sites which are linked to your Gmail account, while it cannot delete videos of photos of yourself which are on a friend or colleague’s web page.
Its Swedish creators Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unneback say privacy and data security is their “number one focus from beginning to end”.
The site keeps your details secure by making their software work on your computer rather than sending the information to their servers and is secured by Google’s OAuth protocol. This protocol is what allows you to access third party websites using your Gmail or Facebook account without revealing your password.
According to the site, this means Deseat.me doesn’t have access to your login information – all it finds are the accounts you want to delete.
The website might gain increased traction at the moment, after the Investigatory Powers Bill – nicknamed the “Snoopers Charter” – was given the go-ahead this week, coming into effect before the end of the year.
The charter will require web and phone firms to store data about the public’s activity online. Thus, though a small step, perhaps the deleting power of deseat.me is exactly the type of thing internet users will be looking for in the coming months.
