Beginners guide to anonymity.

												Beginners guide to anonymity on the internet.
													If you have any questions after reading
													 through this tutorial, contact me on
														      Discord: e01#3691



Okay, you probably have some form of social media, and you have some sort of email address. You probably used this email address to sign up to a site, or even your phone number. But, what you're unaware of, is that once it's on the internet, it's on the internet forever.

Don't worry though! We'll go through how to remove your personal information from the internet in this tutorial. So, lets begin.

First of all, you're going to need to understand the pro's and cons about doing this. Once you do this, people shouldn't be able to find any of your personal information. You may have to deactivate something like your linkedin account, or Facebook, etc. If you do not wish to this, I strongly suggest still reading on, you might rethink keeping your personal information open to the public.

So, why is it important not to have your personal information on the internet?
Well, one reason of many, is that once you turn 18 you're applicable for a credit card, bank account, your own house and car. Your personal information could be used against you in the act of Identity Theft. This is where someone on the internet impersonates you and technically spends your money, in your name. You may have heard of identity theft before, but not paid much attention to it. Anyone could be a victim of identity theft, including myself.

Your personal information could also be sold on by companies for money. You ever had one of those "have you been in an accident recently?" phone calls? Well, they actually got your information from people selling on your data. You may have heard about Facebook selling a load of their users data (depending on when you're reading this, it may not be recent), and how Mark Zuckerberg got taken to court for it, because, it is indeed illegal to sell personal information like that. That's besides the point though.

So how do I remove my personal information from the internet?
You can't, simple as that. You can however limit what people can find about you. First of all, if you have Facebook, set your settings to maximum privacy. If you don't use Facebook, follow these steps to deactivate your account the PROPER way. If you don't follow these steps, your Facebook account is still indexed within their servers and you can still be found.

Go to settings:
Go to "change name".
Change it to something that is NOT your name.
Go to "set username"
Make your new username something like:  ghbklmiohyugvhbjknlmoyft
Delete all your pictures, friends, posts, check-ins, birthdays, everything.
Change your email to a burner*.
Go to manage account.
Deactivate it.
                                                         *Burner: Something not related to you, e.g burner emails do not contain your
														  name or anything to do with you. If you make a burner email, don't sign up in
														  your real name.

Congratulations! You've now successfully deactivated your Facebook account. But, there's still much more information out there related to you I'm sure. So, go to a site called PIPL.com , then search for yourself. If you find any information related to you at all, email the admins of the site and request for it to be removed. You do not usually have to provide proof of identity for these sites to remove your information. If you're in America, sites such as Thatsthem.com that provides addresses can also take your information down. If you're in the UK, search for your (or in the case you're younger than 18, your parents), and see if you can find your address. If they say no to removing your information, threaten them with legal action. Even though you won't really take legal action, they'd probably remove it then because no one wants to go to court. Bad for business.


Okay, once you've done that, you're going to want to look for emails. A site called "haveibeenpwned.com" will tell you if your email has been leaked in a data-breach of a website. e.g when something like Facebook gets hacked, someone will upload the users information, or even sell it, so the information that was "Private" becomes "Public". This is a good site to use for checking if you could have been compromised. So, if you have been compromised, the best thing to do would be to change your password(s).

How do I stop companies selling my personal information?
Again, you can't, but you can limit what personal information they have on you. Try using a burner email for social media, and then a personal email for business. Such as work, etc. Better yet, use a work email for work!

IP Addresses
So, every time you turn on the internet, without going too in depth, you're using a unique set of numbers called an IP address. This essentially allows your computer, phone, tablet, whatever you're using, to communicate with other devices. You'd want to mask your IP address, because it can give a physical location too. How do you do this? You can do a couple of things:

Purchase  VPN (recommended).
VPN's or Virtual Private Networks, mask your IP address. So, you could be in London, but your IP address makes out you're in Bulgaria. Some VPN providers even allow you to choose where you're "located".

Set up a PROXY (advanced).
PROXIES do the same thing as VPNs, except PROXIES are steroid addicts and don't stop working out at the gym. They basically use a chain of other computers to encrypt and send your data to and fro other places. Tor, for example, is a massive PROXY chain.

If you're looking to purchase yourself a VPN, note this: Any good VPN should NEVER keep logs. You can tell whether a VPN keeps logs or not by looking in their description for what they provide, e.g: "PORT FOWARDING, NO LOGS, 60+ LOCATIONS". Always look out for "NO LOGS". I'd personally recommend nVPN.

So, congratulations! You now know the basics of anonymity on the internet.

~ e01 @AccessPwned