How to Find and Delete Old Online Accounts You Don't Use

The average adult in the United States has dozens of online accounts they no longer use — an old Yahoo email, a MySpace profile, an account at a store that closed years ago, a forum they posted on in 2012, a free trial they forgot to cancel. Every one of those accounts holds some amount of your personal data (email, password, maybe address or phone number), and every one of them is a potential weak link if that company gets breached.

Breaches are frighteningly common. The websites Have I Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com) and Mozilla Monitor (monitor.mozilla.org) let you enter your email and see every known breach your address has appeared in. For many people, the list is 10 to 40 entries long. Closing old accounts removes your data from future breach lists.

Finding the accounts is the real work. Three techniques find about 95 percent of them. First, search your email inbox for the words "welcome," "verify your account," and "confirm your email." Every account creation sent at least one of those messages, and the messages are usually still in your Inbox or Archive. Second, open your password manager (if you use one) and scroll through — you'll see logins you haven't touched in years. Third, Google your own name, email address, and old usernames — sometimes you'll find public profiles you didn't know still existed.

Once you've found an account, the site JustDeleteMe.xyz is your friend. It's a crowd-sourced directory of account deletion links for over 700 websites, rated from "Easy" (one click) to "Impossible" (cannot be deleted). For US residents, CCPA gives you a legal right to request deletion at many companies. EU residents have the same right via GDPR. Both laws apply to companies that do business in their respective regions.