How to Clean Up Your Digital History
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy_:
How to Clean Up Your Digital History:
Once you post something to the internet, it's there forever unless you take steps to remove it (and even then, you may not be successful.) While keeping your digital history around in perpetuity can have its advantages-digging out those tax emails from 2006, looking back on vacations from half a decade ago-it's also worth keeping some parts of our online trails as short as we can.
First, it means nothing from our past can come back and embarrass us. Second, it makes it harder for advertising companies to keep track of what we're up to online. And third (in the case of files and emails at least), it frees up space for new stuff.
If you've decided that you'd rather not have decades worth of tweets and emails hanging around, there are ways to put limits on your digital baggage. Note this is slightly different to stopping sites and networks from tracking you as you make your way around the web, though the two are definitely linked.
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