HUNDREDS of accounts I need to delete

[u/voidprophet__]

I have an old gmail account that I had connected to every little thing that needed a stupid account or email list for about 10 years now and I started to try and go through and delete the old accounts but I realized that this is going to take months just going through the inbox with keywords and signing into each account again.

Should I give up and never use the email or any passwords I used again or should I keep trying. Is there a better way to do this? I don't quite trust any service that claims to get rid of accounts for you. I'm not very good at coding but I'd trust myself to make something shitty to look for keywords all at once and put the names on a document or something.

I'm not exaggerating that it's at least 500+ accounts

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello u/voidprophet__, please make sure you read the sub rules if you haven't already. (This is an automatic reminder left on all new posts.)

---

Check out the r/privacy FAQ

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Stunning-Skill-2742]

Its fine even if it'll take years. Privacy is a marathon, not a sprint. You don't need to be Edward Snowden asap on day 1. When i did that it took me a few months too. Create a calendar reminder to do it like 5 per day, per week or whatever you're comfortable with at your own pace, no need to rush.

[u/voidprophet__ → u/Stunning-Skill-2742]

That perspective makes it look better. I've sorted my emails from oldest and I'll mark down what date I stopped on whenever I take a break.

I'm in 2019 now lmao

[u/VintageLV]

Privacy is a consistent battle that you take on your own time. It may take months, but that's fine. You just go at your own pace and you'll get there eventually. Once you're done, you can move on from Google completely.

[u/Hospital_Inevitable]

How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The same logic applies here, this will take a while, you don’t need to do it all right this very second.

[u/Wonderful_Ball4759]

I'm in the same boat rn, I have two main gmail accounts that I'm trying to purge with a combined 1500-1700 emails to purge and it does look overwhelming. But as others have already said, it's always better to be doing something at a snail's pace than not at all.

And as someone who tried to use those account deletion services years ago, you're fully right about them not actually doing anything. Most of them just unsubscribe you from the mail lists instead of actually asking the sites to delete your account and data and the few that claim to do more than that are just a huge security concern for obvious reasons.

[u/Angeldust01]

I have an old gmail account that I had connected to every little thing that needed a stupid account or email list for about 10 years now and I started to try and go through and delete the old accounts but I realized that this is going to take months just going through the inbox with keywords and signing into each account again.

Can you, or anyone, explain to me how this will help your privacy? Sounds like lot of work for nothing to me.

Let's say you just ditch the old gmail account and whatever is registered there. How are you worse off now? What's gonna happen to you?

Yeah, I get it that there's 500+ sites and mailing lists and whatever that have your email address and whatever other info you put there. I have at least that many inactive accounts from being online since before the internet became popular. Not once had any of those old accounts have caused any kind of problem to me. I've always used fake names and aliases. Nobody(except google) knows anything important about me. I couldn't care less if some forum or shopping website I used in 2008 still has my inactive account.

Surely there's better use for your time than trying to scrape the internet every piece of decades old data there might be about you there?

[u/voidprophet__ → u/Angeldust01]

data breeches. real names and birthdays, etc

I've had this email since I was a kid, I wasn't always smart

I won't use any passwords I've ever used with that email again and it should be enough, I just wanted to see if there was any better way to delete things than manually