Everybody signs up for free stuff or services, goodies, whatever. It’s only human.
Fort me, it’s graphics, fonts, photography sites, digital art sites. What can I say?
Things pile up really quickly, and your inbox looks like World War Z around the walls of Jerusalem.
So, it’s time to get rid of stuff you no longer need. Like “accounts”.
MakeUseOf had a good article (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-4-changes-delete-online-account/) which gives four steps before closing an account.
1. Check for dependencies:
Whether you had the email option for sign up or had to sign in using Social Media - G+, Twitter or Facebook. IFTT has a dashboard to sync with Google Drive/update Facebook. So, if you want to delete IFTT, You won’t be able to update G Drive/Facebook/Dropbox if you don’t create a separate way to keep the dependent account without IFTTT. So, unless you’re willing to lose those other accounts, don’t delete the base account.
Also think about apps and addons. You’ll have to unlink them before ridding yourself of the base account.
A separate issue is Security: Let’s say you use Medium. Medium uses the old OAuth to sign in, which is easily hacked because of vulnerabilities in that old software.
There’s a good site: NameChk (http://namechk.com/) will check (mostly social sites, but apps too) where your handle is in use.
2. Hold onto your data!
If you have uploaded pictures, documents, videos, music, etc. make sure you choose to archive that data and download it all for storage.
When you look at the data on that service and decide you don’t need it, delete it. Don’t leave anything behind. Once you delete it, and close your account, it should be gone.
Also, while you have the account (before you even think of deleting it), go through the stuff you’ve stored. Backup and delete. Don’t store really personal things or financial data in the Cloud. PLEASE! You’ll pay less in the end.
3. Change the account details.
Some services ‘own’ the username you choose. If you delete that account, even with your username you won’t be able to access that service. So, if you like that username (your original one) change your account details (username and password). Also, for services which won’t allow you to close your account, you can alter the personal details in it and change email, etc. so that the account (while it exists), is not identifiable with you.
4. Manage active subscriptions.
There are persistent people in the world. They’ll continue to market you with emails long after you’ve deleted your account. Unsubscribe from the emails before deleting the account, and change the email address to a disposable account.
Source:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-4-changes-delete-online-account/