How to Become 'Web Dead'

March 19, 2008— -- You may have forgotten about Friendster, the once-booming social networking site that faded as American Web users flocked to MySpace and Facebook. But Friendster may not have forgotten about you.

It still remembers, for instance, that John Smith from Salisbury, Md., enjoys hobbies including "comic books" and "copulation." And any Google user can read a glowing testimonial written to Brooklynite Sam Brown, describing his habit of walking around his apartment drunk and naked, as well as his talent for using a certain part of his anatomy as a puppet.

In fact, Friendster is a ghost town of detailed personal information: The site received only 2.4 million unique visitors in the U.S. in January, but has more than 10 million American profiles, many of which publicly display information that users would probably prefer to keep private.

Click here to learn more about erasing your online identity at our partner site, Forbes.com.

Luckily, deleting your old Friendster profile takes just seconds. A subtly placed link on the bottom right corner of the "Account Settings" page will permanently delete all information stored on your page.

While you're at it, why not delete your old blog, that embarrassing attempt at literary wit that still lingers online? And perhaps it would be best to rid yourself of the Flickr account with those incriminating photos from last weekend? In fact, why not delete every reference to yourself online--simply disappear from the Web and restart your digital reputation afresh?

It's not easy, says Michael Fertik. But plenty of Web users would like to try.

Fertik's business, a start-up called ReputationDefender, based in Louisville, Ky., advertises that it lets users control their Web identity: For $30, the service will work to remove any content a subscriber chooses, using tactics that start with polite requests to the content's publisher and occasionally escalate to legal threats.

Most of Fertik's 6,000 or so customers only want a limited amount of material removed--a couple of embarrassing or defamatory blog posts, for instance. But a few, he says, want all online references about themselves to evaporate. "They want to be what they call 'Web dead,' " he says.