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In the last days I spent a disproportionate amount deleting old accounts I found in my password manager, and mostly because so many companies - despite the GDPR - have rudimentary, manually when not completely nonexistent processes to delete your data.

In this post I describe my process going through about 100 old accounts and trying to delete them all, including a top 10 for the weirdest, funniest or most interesting cases I encountered while doing so.

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[-] obvs@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've been doing this.

I also realized the importance of not just using a different (strong) password on each site, but using a different email, and using a different username.

I had quite a few accounts to modify/delete, and I realized if I did 5-10 per day that I could accomplish it in less than a few months, with very little stress.

Well, good news. I finished last week.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Nice article.
Enjoyed reading it.

A few months ago, I alao went on a small spree of deleting from my ~500 accounts.
Some companies/services were offline, some redirected, some had no or very cumbersome ways to delete my data.
Sometimes I juat wanted to edit my email.

Welp. No can do bro. Your E-Mail is cemented in place and only the heat-death of the universe can remove it.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 0 points 4 months ago

Great read thanks. It’s a quest I have stated here and there but you methods an awareness gives inspiration to the tedious task. Would you be willing to share the email template you used?

[-] loudwhisper@infosec.pub 0 points 4 months ago

Thanks for the kind words!

I won't take credits for the template, I have used the one found here: https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-erasure-request/

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 1 points 4 months ago

Did you enquire with any if they had sold/shared your data. I suppose it could be an endless quest trying to trace and delete everything. I know that wasn’t your aim. Just curious as I am starting to do this. We can’t trust online with anything anymore so time to start wiping my footprints of what I still can. And my account list is a good place to start.

this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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