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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Becoming an Internet Ghost .... erasing all traces

Kadhalan is a 1994 Tamil action-romance film written and directed by S. Shankar. The film had Prabhu Deva and Nagma in the lead roles. The song Mukkabla from the movie, became a national sensation, and owing to the rage that the song created, Kadhalan was dubbed in Hindi as Humse Hai Muqabala and in Telugu as Premikudu. The energetic dance movements of young Prabhu Deva took him to lofty heights ~ the comedy of Vadivelu as a college student ! was a great hit too. 

The "Mukkala ... Mukkabla"  song composed by A. R. Rahman with lyrics by Vaali was sung by  Mano, Swarnalatha and A. R. Rahman. The song was heard at every club, disco, restaurant, marriage hall and street corner ~ in the end of the song…. Prabhu Deva would vanish in thin air with clothes falling down without any support.  In the song Prabhudeva was picturised as a cowboy in a set erected by Thotta Tharani. 

Away from Cinema, how many hours daily do you spend on the internet – how many social net working sites do you enter daily – and how much do you post on FB, Twitter, Instagram, blog and more………..

When was the last time you cleaned your table in Office and your house…. Over a small period, we tend to collect so many things, which we may never use in life – but still accumulate them…… and that applies more to e-property. Just casually stroll your Computer or laptop – open say 25 word files at random, tell whether you really require the info in them or the file itself – what was the % of ‘not required’ or ‘not opened in recent 1 year’ … do you really require them and more importantly would you remember where they are available and retrieve…. and what about the dumps of data / photos / and other bytes that you post on the world wide web in various forums and social networking sites……

If your growing weariness of being constantly tethered to the internet becomes overwhelming, it might be time to scrub yourself from the social media sphere altogether. One would wish to get away without a trace and here is something on eliminating the digital past  - courtesy – gizmodo.com.  Here's how you can become a ghost on the Internet, by tracking down and eliminating your digital past. The technical guide clarifies on self-destruction process from the mail accounts and from the social media.

Facebook : FB makes it very obvious how to deactivate one’s account; it's under Account Settings > Security > Deactivate your account. Don't be fooled! Deactivation isn't deletion, and when you chose this option, Facebook holds on to all your bits and pieces just in case you change your mind. To truly nuke your account, you need to head to the Delete My Account page and click the big blue button. That's it, you're officially off Facebook. The process might take up to a fortnight to complete since the system has to scan the entirety of itself making sure all data related to you—every tagged picture, like, and mention—but when it's gone, it's all gone. The process is irreversible. 

However, if you want the  treasure trove of pictures and updates living on your hard drive, you can download the whole shebang by going to Account Settings > General > Download a copy of your Facebook Data > Start My Archive.
Twitter : On  Twitter deactivate means delete. And it's easy! Go to Account Settings> Deactivate my account > Okay, fine, deactivate account. Then just enter your password and you're good to go. The information might still survive on Company’s servers for 30 days.
LinkedIn : Another easy one. Head to the upper right hand corner of the page, and select Privacy & Settings from the drop-down menu. From there, head to Account > Close Your Account. Answer a quick question about why you're leaving (as if you need a reason!), verify your account one more time, and then revel in the fact that you'll never get LinkedIn spam again.
It'll take a while for all professional network traces of you to leave Google and other search engines, but you'll be purged before long.
Google+ : There's a decent chance you're a Google+ member without even realizing it—which makes leaving all the more compelling. It's also the most convoluted process of the four. You got wedded to google – gmail, drive, you tube, blogger, picasa web, google +  and more…

Cleaning Up the Scraps : Once you've taken care of the four elephants in the room, it's time to go after your smaller and older accounts. Luckily, there are tools for that like : Account Killer; Just Delete Me; Knowem; and more…..

A friend of mine who got so addicted to Facebook, just for the heck of it stayed away from FB for a fortnight, but started feeling the pangs unbearable and then deleted his account when he had 1000+ friends and when he was getting more than 100 likes for every post of his… now he is a Internet ghost……..

You may not want to become one, but one still should know that it is possible. Thanks to htp://gizmodo.com/ on the post on how to erase yourself from the internet.  Interesting !!!


With regards – S. Sampathkumar

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