I feel your pain. I've been trying to clean my digital life up and it is almost overwhelming. I've only been working on it for a month or so in my spare time but it's a collosal PIA. I wish every site that had a create account button had an equally obvious and easy to click delete account button.
That's common knowledge now but some of us have been around since the beginning of the modern internet when corporate data collection wasn't even a thing. The privacy invasion was a slow creep that some of didn't notice until it was too late. The 198 accounts in my password manager are only the last ten years or so of accounts. I've been online since the early 90s and can't begin to remember what services/sites I was using back then that might have survived or been breached.
I love shows like that. There is one called something like 'How I caught my killer' which usually involves digital forensics of some sort. It's cool and super creepy at the same time. It also makes me wonder how far I should go with trying to be anonymous. If someone had a Grapheneos phone bought anonymously and only used e2ee communications on a VPN..what sort of hindrance would that be if that person was murdered. Lol these are the thought exercises that I go through while I'm walking the dog....that and how to keep the dog from noticing that bunny in the next yard.
Long story short. I googled my name and city and was sufficiently creeped out. Ive been online a long time and just didn't notice how much privacy had eroded around me. It's like that parable about how to cook a frog. They just slowly increased the temp on me. Fortunately I've jumped out of the pot before I got cooked alive.
I feel your pain. I've been trying to clean my digital life up and it is almost overwhelming. I've only been working on it for a month or so in my spare time but it's a collosal PIA. I wish every site that had a create account button had an equally obvious and easy to click delete account button.