Help How I delete my entire digital trace? Internet AND data stored on my PC?

[zekeyaeger]

If things work out, I will be done with this godforsaken Earth in a few days. I do not want any of my stuff to lay around, a bunch of it is embarassing, and I want some form of dignity at least before I die. If not total deletion, is there a way I could put a password on my devices that would forbid anyone to get access? I want to die with no information of mine being accessible in any form.

 

[LapseInTime]

I too have considered it. First of all, the logs your internet provider holds, I don't think can be deleted. At least not without great effort. As your locally stored data, I thought about giving DBAN a try. It's a utility meant to wipe drives clean. For small drives I thought that, maybe, I should just use Eraser or the DD command in linux. This is my plan till now, I am trying to perfect it but maybe it can give you a reference point. Maybe tech-savvy people can weigh in.

 

[AvaCutey]

If things work out, I will be done with this godforsaken Earth in a few days. I do not want any of my stuff to lay around, a bunch of it is embarassing, and I want some form of dignity at least before I die. If not total deletion, is there a way I could put a password on my devices that would forbid anyone to get access? I want to die with no information of mine being accessible in any form.

Total deletion is hard if not impossible, but with social media and forums most of the times you can delete your accounts, and with devices you can factory reset them and pawn them off/bin them. You can also deactivate your email account, most of these actions are permanent. Some things cant be deleted as they are being held on an external server, but if you are using pseudonyms online you are likely just another internet user. For hard disks and drives, a hammer works well too.

I too have considered it. First of all, the logs your internet provider holds, I don't think can be deleted.

I use VPN/TOR for this exact reason.

 

[destinationlosangel]

Total deletion is hard if not impossible, but with social media and forums most of the times you can delete your accounts, and with devices you can factory reset them and pawn them off/bin them. You can also deactivate your email account, most of these actions are permanent. Some things cant be deleted as they are being held on an external server, but if you are using pseudonyms online you are likely just another internet user. For hard disks and drives, a hammer works well too.

I use VPN/TOR for this exact reason.

is it possible to access this forum via vpn ?

 

[AvaCutey]

is it possible to access this forum via vpn ?

Yes, but they didn't want it used during registration. I still didn't use my home Wi-Fi to sign up though

 

[identity0]

If devices are encrypted with Full-Disk Encryption (FDE), such as with LUKS, and a strong passphrase, it is likely that even forensic experts would not be able to get access to your local data. It would be best to set this up on new drives and physically destroy the old ones that were used with unencrypted data - it is impossible to truly securely delete data you already saved prior to FDE - though I doubt with a typical suicide that anyone would have reason to pay professionals to do data recovery, so that step may not be necessary.

 

[Mäximum]

I want to die with no information of mine being accessible in any form.

Wiping information off the internet is not really possible. For HDDs and SSDs, it's probably best to just physically destroy them. Like hitting them with a hammer, burning the disk, scratching the disk etc. Just shred them as best as you can and dispose the pieces in a public trash bin. You can also dispose them in multiple locations if you want.

 

[amnesia999]

it is impossible to truly securely delete data you already saved prior to FDE - though I doubt with a typical suicide that anyone would have reason to pay professionals to do data recovery, so that step may not be necessary.

True. There are many good, free utilities that can wipe data more or less securely off a hard drive. You can do a web search for them. If you actually have data that someone is willing to pay a company to do data recovery to get back, physical destruction of the hard drive or SSD is the way to go.

On the encrypted data storage side, If you've got data you've just got to have around until the very last minute, you could use a utility named VeraCrypt to create encrypted files within your existing file system and save the data there, or use it to create encrypted partitions and save the data there.

After you've wiped everything, you could also use a live operating system that runs directly from a DVD drive or USB key to access the Internet. The idea would be that once you shut down the live operating system, all the data (which is usually stored in memory, rather than written to disk, when you're using a live DVD) goes away. One such live operating system is called Tails, and it runs all your internet access through anonymizing software.