this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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The challenge of deleting old online accounts | Loudwhisper (loudwhisper.me)
submitted 2 days ago by loudwhisper@infosec.pub to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] Cherry@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] loudwhisper@infosec.pub 1 points 10 hours ago

Hey, I haven't, but to be honest, the answers I got from most companies showed me that the processes were handled by people who barely understood the legal and technical aspects around data collection (e.g., often support agents were on the other side of privacy@), which means I wouldn't trust them with their answer anyway AND I doubt many of these companies will have effective way to even check that.

From the data being sold point of view, I think unfortunately it's way more effective reaching out to the few big data brokers to request cancelations or pay one of the companies who offer such service...