How to delete yourself from the internet

If cyber attack scare stories, viral fake news articles, online abuse and the election of Donald Trump have given you the resolve to walk away from the internet, you're in luck.

Developers in Sweden have created a website that can help you delete your online presence with just a few clicks.

Wille Dahlbo and Linus Unnebäck designed the internet deletion site, available at Deseat.me, as a place for people to "clean up your internet presence".

It lets you see all of the websites you are signed up to or have accounts for and asks if you would like to delete them or unsubscribe. It asks for your e-mail address and password so it can scan sites you're signed up to.

Dahlbo and Unnebäck said they take the privacy of users seriously and that the program runs on the user's computer, rather than their servers.

"So basically the only thing you're telling us is what accounts you want to delete. That's it," they said. The website uses Google's security protocol, which means it doesn't gain access to users' log-in information.

Deseat.me is still limited. It requires users to have a Google e-mail address that is used for all your online accounts. It also hasn't managed to retrieve account deletion information from every service yet so some appear with a greyed out delete button. And it may never work for smaller sites.

How to delete yourself from the internet

1. Go to deseat.me

2. Sign in with a Google e-mail address

3. Go through the list of websites you're signed up to and decide whether you want to "delete", "add to delete queue" or "keep"

4. If you have more sites associated with other accounts you'd like to delete, you will need to visit these individually and follow their instructions.