Washington - For those of us who spend a lot of time on the internet, there will be the occasional urge to simply disappear, delete your accounts, roll back your Google results and become invisible.
Signal, a text and phone-call encryption app recommended by Edward Snowden, recorded a 400 percent jump in downloads after the US election.
And while landlords, colleges and potential employers have examined the social-media presence of applicants for years, there are signs this kind of scrutiny is close to getting more invasive.
A person's digital trail can also serve as the primary gateway for online harassment of private individuals.
I asked Bradley Shear, a lawyer who specialises in social media and privacy, to walk me through a few ways to become invisible. If you really want to step away from the internet and leave no digital trace, you're probably going to have to change a lot of things and you're probably not going to like it.
To go the full off-the-grid route, Shear said: “Do not use any electronic device that can lead back to your whereabouts.”
There are advantages to having a robust digital life, here are a few considerations:
Delete your accounts
Having a social-media account ensures your active participation in letting the internet learn more about you. Facebook, in particular, knows a lot about you and is very good at tracking what you do across the Web even when you’re not actively using Facebook.
“You have to think about digital accounts you currently have,” Shear said. “You want to either delete content from them or delete the accounts altogether.”
Once that's done, many of the companies will still keep the data you previously gave them, but at least it won't be publicly shared.
Shear next suggests getting rid of your Gmail account.
“Every time you access it, they have your IP address,” he said.
A life disappeared would also mean you can’t send e-mails to Gmail or Yahoo accounts.'
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And if you want your activity not to be tracked you would have to essentially use a virtual private network, or VPN, every time you access the internet, unless you exclusively access the internet from public machines.
For search, you can use sites such as DuckDuckGo instead of Google or Yahoo, or any other search engine that tracks you.
If all of that's not going to happen, you could at the very least consider deleting unnecessary content from your social-media accounts.
And beyond the in-account settings for each service, third-party tools such as TweetDelete allow you to erase years of content automatically.
But even that, Shear noted, doesn't provide perfect results and “the Library of Congress is cataloguing every single tweet ever.”
JustDelete.Me provides a good starting point for people who want straight-forward links to the deleting pages of accounts you might have.
Create ‘alternative facts’
For those who aren't going the full “off the grid” or the “delete all your accounts” routes, Shear said one of the most valuable things you can do is to litter the internet with misinformation about yourself.
“Always use a throwaway birthday” when signing up for social-media accounts or any other service online.
"Use a throwaway e-mail. If you've already given such information to a bunch of sites, try to change it. Yes, Shear knows this means he’s essentially advising you to ignore the terms of service for these sites, and he’s okay with that.
“Feel free to protect your privacy and violate their terms of service,” he said.
Go after data brokers
Anyone who’s ever self-Googled knows there are “people search” sites out there. Usually, this information, available from public records or internet data collection, is sold for a fee.
Welcome to the fun world of data brokers, the businesses that collect this information to sell it to other businesses.
Trying to fully disappear from their databases, Shear warned, is difficult.
Here’s how to start: “Look at the first five to 10 pages of your Google results and see who has your name,” Shear said.
Your information will probably be on sites such as Whitepages, Spokeo and Intelius, for instance.
Each of these sites should have a way to opt out, but Shear warns that sometimes the opt-out process can be a scam.
If the site requires you to verify your identity don’t do that.
The second part of keeping your information out of the hands of data brokers involves plugging any of your digital leaks and preventing new ones.
Have you ever signed up for an account by linking it to your Facebook or Google accounts? That was not smart.
Don’t do that. Undo it if you can.
What permissions have you given each of the apps on your phone?
“Most apps ask for way too much information,” Shear warned.
How much do you need that app that requires access to your phone and data?
If you want to keep your phone, Shear recommended, delete every app you don’t actually need.
Be brutal.
Even doing all of the above won't completely enable most of us to disappear from the internet - particularly those of us who are older and have a longer digital trail.
Can you really disappear from the Internet? “You might not get perfect results," said Shear, "but it's worth a try.”