2026 Cleanup
New Year’s Day is often filled with resolutions. Some come to fruition with plans and actions, while others are realistically more about ideas, goals, and guidelines. We’ve all been using the Internet for a long time. One of the Internet’s best (and worst) attributes is that it doesn’t know how to forget. Data from 20 years ago can seem very new to someone reading an old page for the first time. Sometimes that data can be incorrect or even dangerous. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll show you some ways you can clean up some of your old data to help streamline your digital reputation.
First, let’s begin by helping you consume data for the time range you really want. After you do a search, click the Tools button, then the Any time arrow, then select the date range you have in mind. This simple filter can significantly declutter your search results and help you find the information you need faster.
Now, as for the forgetting part, it’s tough. The reality is once something is published on the Internet, it’s very hard to make it disappear. Perhaps the real New Year’s resolution should be to think twice before posting anything. With the daunting realities of the Internet’s memory in mind, here are some tools that can help keep casual search results from revealing too much about your past:
DeleteMe – removes information from data-broker sites
Apple’s Hide My Email and Firefox Relay – creates burner email addresses
Have I Been Pwned – searches data breaches for your information
Cyd – short for Clawback Your Data, Cyd deletes X posts, interactions, and bookmarks
If you’re curious to learn more about people’s efforts to delete themselves from the Internet, check out these recent articles from The New York Times and The Atlantic.
If you’d like help with how to better organize your data and budget for the new year, we are here for you. Whether you need an immediate answer or help with long-term strategy, we’re here to do our best to answer your tech questions. Contact your account manager at Pegasus to talk about how we can assist you with your 2026 resolutions.
