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core-utility
While I applaud what this article is trying to do, the reality of it is that unless you're spending a large amount of time and money to remain anonymous, some portion of your information gets leaked online eventually and easily. It is a constant never-ending effort leading to (but not ending with) not having Amazon packages come to your house in your true name, registering your mortgage, utilities, and internet in other name(s) or businesses (which is no simple feat in itself), and risking all that work getting lost because you slipped once and updated your credit card address.

The data removal services/sites may give temporary relief once, but the next time something flags an upload or update again you're right back to where you started. Michael Bazzell [1] has deep knowledge of what it takes and has published books on it, and it gets harder and more disrupting as time goes on, to where unless you're hiding from a known target or stalker it is almost not worth it.

[1]: https://inteltechniques.com/

gregjor
How did we survive decades of phone books and directory assistance, when anyone could get an address and phone number for free?
octoberfranklin
Computers were expensive and not universally interconnected.
Teever
We didn't live such an interconnected world that some shit-head 13 yo from a country you have never heard couldn't harass you and ruin your life with impunity.
gregjor
We also didn't live in a world where everyone suffered from a compulsion to spill every personal detail and opinion to the world. No social media, nothing to dox.
watersb
Phone books from outside your service area were available for sale, but it was tedious and relatively expensive to collect them.
gregjor
You just called 1-AREACODE-555-1212 to have a real person (later a computer) look up the name for you. Public libraries used to carry telephone directories from all over.
netizen-936824
Because people weren't broadcasting their ideas to the entire globe for some rando to get pissy about

But now we have twitter

no-dr-onboard
The “Delete Me” site that the author links has a bad certificate.

I’m on mobile so I can’t verify, but wouldn’t that be something if it were a phishing site?