Deleting my unused profiles
I have signed up for and tried just about every "Web 2.0" service that has popped up over the past few years -- Flickr, Yahoo! 360, Slide, Rollyo, 43 Things, del.icio.us, Digg, MySpace, etc. Unfortunately, I only consistently use a handful of them -- Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us.

Today, I decided to clean up some of the unused, but Google-indexed, profile pages for these long-forgotten services. I just don't want these stray bits of data associated with my online persona (yeah, I know how stupid saying "my online persona" sounded) in Google.

So far, I am having limited success in removing my profiles from these services. Slide and 43 Things made it really easy with a "delete account" option.

Most other sites, though, don't let you delete your account. I understand the business reason behind this (i.e. they can claim to have more users), but it is a pain in the butt for anyone who has tried a service and wants out. I've e-mailed Rollyo and Yahoo! Rollyo responded and said they would delete it for me (although, they thought I was a weirdo for wanting to, I think).

For those sites (that I don't use anymore) that don't offer a delete option, I am going in and removing any data that I have created to test their service. If they provide a URL field, I am simply pointing people back to my blog.