This list will be reviewed a couple of times a year. This is only a sampling of the places you need to look as part of this social profile gathering process. You just need to get in there once to see if you want to keep it, need to download anything, or simply want to make your password more secure and update that outdated profile.

Listen to this 5 minutes episode and save the graphic above for your list. Be ready to verify many old accounts. Hopefully, you still have access to the email accounts you used to set them up.

Susan Finch:

Hey everyone, Susan Finch here. And as promised, we’re going to dive into those categories. I’ve started a series to teach you how to wrangle in your online footprint, your digital profile, your digital footprint, to thin it out. And if nothing else, gain control and make it more secure, because you’ve forgotten about a lot of things that are out there.

Today, what we’re going to be tackling is just social media. These are all the categories we will eventually be covering. But for now, this episode is just for social media. So let’s go there. Why would I do that? All right. Oh right.

Most of these will be super familiar to you guys. You currently use a lot of them, but there area lot that you may have forgotten or you became disenchanted with them, don’t have the time, or forgotten about it. It doesn’t make them go away. They’re still out there and they still have your personal information. They may even have some very personal information like your credit card, maybe some things about you you don’t want other people to know. Maybe some photos, you’re not quite sure, or documents. You need to review those, figure out how to get back in those accounts.

First, update the passwords, especially on the ones that you’ve forgotten about. And when you see this list you’re like, “Oh my gosh. That’s memory lane. Totally forgot about that dating site now that I’m married.” Or, I forgot about how that dopey Nextdoor thing that I have that love, hate relationship between coyote sightings, tattling on the neighbors, and hey, can you help me with this thing? Such a mixed bag. Craigslist, eBay, all of them, your profiles are out there.

Your preferences, your data is being shared and utilized by people where they don’t even compensate you for it. As we know, your data is your value, online at least. So you’re going to review all of these. There is a really, really long list at influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-sites. If you go there, you will see a list, that I don’t even know how to pronounce half of those. There are so many venues and some of them might be familiar to you, and some, if you’ve never gone there before, don’t bother. If you don’t have the time, don’t go set up anything new until you wrangled in your old stuff.

So start with the list that you see here.  Remember, if you’re doing this for somebody else, you may have to validate into their accounts because you will be on an unfamiliar device. There’s so much more security now in a lot of these sites with two-step messengers and things, or two-step verification. So you’re going to want to make sure that you have access to maybe that person’s phone, if you’re helping somebody in your family, or that your phone is handy. And some of those old email accounts, think of the things you registered with your old Yahoo account or your AOL accounts. Oh my gosh. You’re going to have to get access to those again, to be able to lock this down.

Update the email to something more current, whether it’s Gmail or your personal domain. Change the password. Add two-step verification to all of it. You’re going to do this first. Then you’re going to review. Get some coffee, kick back, and have some gingerbread, do something, but it’s going to take a while, tackle a few at a time. Review what’s in there. For all you know, you’re going to find hidden treasures you forgot about. I went to Amazon Photos, and I’d forgotten I had done an automatic backup of stuff, but I found some photos that I had totally forgotten about that were so sweet and fun of my kids. I was really excited to get those, and I shared them. They were all, “Oh, mom, you found those, yay.” Because sometimes all we have are digital copies of everything. So check it before you make the decision to toss it. And if you make the decision to toss it, check their site for policies to see, may I request to have all of my data removed?

You just don’t want it dormant and hanging out there. And your stuff is still sitting there accessible because you never know, some of those sites, some of those older venues make all that stuff publicly available or photos available, or there’s some fine print that says they can use your photos in their promotions and anywhere. How many of us actually read the fine print of every single social venue? Not many. Go through the list, go find them all. Gain access, lock it down, discard what you don’t want any more. It’s okay to thin it out. You don’t have to be everywhere, especially if you’re not going to maintain it anymore.

So best of luck, I will talk to you all next week and I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful, productive week full of joy and finding those little gifts that are given to you every day. This is Susan Finch. You can find me at susanfinch.com. You can also go get more tips from exitpowerstrategies.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. Message me, message me on Facebook, I don’t care. I’ll get back to you. Thank you so much. Bye.