Can you possibly imagine the number of services you have signed up for since you started using the internet ? Take a guess ? So there was that Twitter account that you used for precisely two days and that Paypal that you made for a one-off transaction and on and on… Did you ever wonder whatever happens to these accounts, and more importantly, what happens to your personal information once you stop using them ? 

You have probably even forgotten your username/password combos for half those services you barely used. Yet, these accounts linger out there in the big bad World Wide Web. That can’t possibly be good from a privacy point of view, can it ?

The truth is, that when most of us deem an online service ‘un-useful’ we simply move on without giving two hoots about what happens to our information. I bet that a lot of people abandoned their Orkut and MySpace accounts without bothering to delete or cancel them. 

One primary reason for this behavior is that a lot of services make it very complex for a user to cancel his or her account. Take Skype, for example.  Once you create a Skype account, you cannot delete it. You can only remove all personal information associated to it. I bet most us did not know that at all. With so many service providers, making sure that accounts are deleted is far from easy.  How does a user ensure a complete removal of his/her account information?

Enter Wikicancel.org ^[1] , a website that everyone should bookmark. A valuable resource that tells us the various steps involved in canceling a service account. From a Paypal account to a Netflix subscription,  it covers them all.  Heck, it even tells you how to cancel your AT&T without paying cancellation charges.

The site is kept up-to-date by enthusiastic contributors, and the list of services/subscriptions is growing day by day. Wikicancel.org saves you precious time wasted in searching for the right way to cancel a particular service and the annoyance caused by searching for a direct customer service phone number. Bookmark it now!

-Yogesh