Post 5,001: Starting the Scrub

 “This is a new internet”, Marz said.

Yes. I was telling her I’ve started to do an internet scrub, to remove identifying features, as protection especially from AI (and to stop supporting some awful businesses and their owners).

“Why did I ever put so much personal information online?!”

Exactly, though – – it was a different Internet, and on my blog I had originally wanted people to have a sense of my place in time and space. “I was x years old when Nixon resigned.”

But sweet Jesus, now?

I looked up how to erase your online presence – – I don’t need to do that completely, just erase dates and addresses and details of workplaces, family and personal history, names, accounts, homes, hairstyles, pets… Maybe not hairstyles and pets. And I’ve never posted photos of children.

The only place where I’ve been entirely open by choice is LinkedIn—so many details! Voluntarily provided by me—so that’s the first thing I permanently deleted. 

I’d already deleted my Facebook and Instagram after the Mump election. People tell me, “oh I only use mine once a week” – – not realizing the point is that you have an account. 

We’re not talking to our neighbors here, folks, we’re talking to machines.

Also I closed the YouTube channel of me talking about getting older--it had served its purpose, and I’m glad of that, but didn’t want current audio/visual of me online. I  kept the one of my old Star Trek fanvids, which have little personal info.

And then I started scrubbing this blog. Some is housekeeping I’ve wanted to do anyway– – to go back and select favorite posts and delete clutter. What a task! As of this morning there were 5000 posts – – this is the 5001st!

First off, I did a search for my last name – – and as I thought, Ive never have written it here – – though it is visible in some photos, say of my published books (tho I usually smudged them), which as I encounter I will erase. Machines don’t only read text – they can and do harvest photos. 

Also I searched for and deleted my email user name—even when I’d spaced the actual address out. Like that’s fooling anyone.

Then I erased all the times I’ve said the name of the city where I live/d. It took quite a while, and you could still figure it out easily from clues, if you are a human – – not sure how much an AI would put things together? Probably easily, also, from photos etc.

Started removing birth dates, etc—this is a long process, and I don’t know that I’d bother if I didn’t already, as I said, want to do some cleanup. Maybe cull a lot, for an archive of my own.

I need to do business scrubs – – bink sent me a link to remove credit card info…

I need to think about my photo sharing too… 

You can actually hire people to do all this! But I think I can get a lot of it – – doing a little research into how to clear your name from address providing sites, like the white pages,  etc.

Of course once things are online you can’t erase it entirely. Health records, government docs. Emails! We learned that back in the Clinton/Lewinsky days, right?

But from what I’m reading, none of what I’m doing is paranoid. 

On the contrary. This has long been a sci-fi world we are living in and co-creating, and it keeps getting more sophisticated. 

The other thing is, it’s kinda fun to trace my tracks. Oh, the places I’ve been!