Some sites make it easy (more or less) to delete your account if you don’t feel like using it any longer. Others however make it exceedingly difficult.

Recently I was going thru my password manager and realized there were a ton of accounts I simply didn’t use anymore, so I figured I’d get rid of them. Some I was successful with, while others.. not so much.

Deleting a Gmail account

Google has their services set up in such a way where Gmail is a product attached to your primary Google account. For example, FeedBurner, Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs, Google Alerts and so on are all products.

You have a few options here. You can either delete just the Gmail account, or delete the Google account entirely.

• Go to https://www.google.com/accounts (and yes, the https must be present).
• After logging in, click the Edit link next to My products.
• If you want to delete Gmail alone, click Remove Gmail permanently.
• If you want to close the entire account, click Close account and delete all services and info associated with it.

Deleting a Hotmail account

Microsoft is similar to Google in the respect that Hotmail is deemed a product attached to your Windows Live ID.

• Login to your Hotmail/MSN/Live account at http://login.live.com
• Click Close account
• You may be told that the system is unable to do it and that you have to "Close your Microsoft account". Go ahead and do it.

Is the Hotmail account truly closed at that point? No. The account will be treated as if you haven’t logged in for a few months. After a few days, all information will be removed, so I guess that’s the closest definition of "closed" you can get with a Windows Live ID.

Closing a Yahoo account

Yahoo makes it easy. Follow the steps here.

Closing an AIM account

I could not find a way to close an AOL/AIM account. After a Google search, it would appear the only way to "deactivate" one is to not login to it for six months. Not an elegant solution by any means, but it’s at least something.

Finding links to close other types of web accounts

All web services should make closing your account easy, but unfortunately they don’t. Everybody does it differently. But there are a few common threads.

• Names: It can be called "Close Account", "Remove Account", "Delete Account", "Terminate Account", etc.
• Links: I’ve seen several instances where the "Close My Account" link is black and non-underlined making it look like plain text when in fact it’s a link.
• FAQ: Try searching the FAQ for the web service you’re trying to close.
• Profile: Sometimes the link to close an account will be listed under "Profile".

If you cannot close the account, what do you do?

You will run into some instances where there is no way to close the account (like Identi.ca and AIM). Chances are the reason you want to close it out to begin with is to stop getting those stupid emails from the service. The easiest thing to do is to edit the profile and change it to use a throw-away address. Once done you won’t get anymore crap from them in your email.

If you hadn’t heard, Google is intending to shake up the way it does advertising by customizing it based on your search patterns.

How does the big G know how to do this? They’ll be reading your browser cookies to make it work.

If this doesn’t bother you, browse as you normally would.

If it does bother you that the big G is going to be reading your cookies in a way that makes you uncomfortable, here are some quick ways to kill cookies fast.

Deleting all cookies every time the browser closes (Firefox)

Tools, Options, Privacy, set Keep until: to I close Firefox

Like this:

Overriding default cookie settings (Internet Explorer 7)

Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, Privacy (tab), Advanced (button)

Tick the option to override automatic cookie handling. The easiest one to use is "Prompt" for first and third party cookies. Yes, this may be annoying to be prompted every time a cookie comes by, but at least you know when and where they’re coming from.

Alternatively, you set each to "Block" but check "Always allow session cookies". This should allow for normal web site use that requires cookies (like Gmail and Hotmail) but not retain any when the browser closes.

There is no option I could find to delete all cookies automatically when the browser closes, however you can delete them manually.

Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, General (tab), Delete (button under Browsing History)

Hit the Delete cookies button here to delete them.

Does browser cookie reading bother you?

Some privacy advocates say that Google’s decision to custom tailor ads based on browsing habits is wrong. Is it? Let us know.

I recently bought a Sandisk cruzer micro 4GB USB stick and of course it comes with that U3 crapola preloaded on it.

Formatting the stick does not get rid of it entirely.  If you click (in Windows XP) Start then Run then type COMPMGMT.MSC, click OK, then click Disk  Management from the window that appears, you’ll notice there are two partitions on the stick, one of which is a CDFS system labeled "U3 System".

Try as you might, there’s no way to get rid of it from there.

There are two ways to get rid of this stupid thing to reclaim the space.

First method: Load the stick in Linux and use your partition software o’ choice (like GParted) to remove it.

Second method: Use the U3 uninstaller program for Windows. Just click the "Remove U3" link there to download the program, then run it to completely format the stick to reclaim all the space back.

There are utilities like the freeware CCleaner software that can easily let you list and modify auto-run programs from the Windows XP system registry like this:

Above: In CCleaner, click Tools (large icon on left) then Startup (white button in middle column) to see this list.

However if you’re the type that would rather do this the "old fashioned way", you can get to this information and get the same editing ability by using the tried-and-true registry editor.

You can get to the registry editor in one of two ways.

1. Click Start / Run / type regedit / click OK.
2. Right click on a blank area of the desktop, click New from the context menu that appears, click Shortcut, type regedit in the dialog box that appears (no need to click Browse), click Next, click Finish. This will place a regedit icon on your desktop that you can double-click to launch the Registry Editor.

Inside the registry editor you have to expand some folders – in a specific order – to get to the "run" list.

The order is as follows:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• SOFTWARE
• Microsoft
• Windows
• CurrentVersion
• Run

It should look something like this when you’re done:

From here you have the same modify/delete ability as you do with CCleaner, except using the built-in registry editor instead.

IMPORANT NOTE: Messing around with the Windows registry can seriously screw up your Windows installation if done wrong.

It is highly suggested to BACKUP your registry first. This is done easily via the registry editor by simply clicking File then Export. Do this before making any registry changes. Make sure when exporting your "Export Range" is ticked as "All".

Like this (see bottom left):

Didn’t find what you were looking for in Run?

Maybe it’s not there. Maybe it’s in the Start menu’s "Startup" folder instead.

Click Start, All Programs, Startup and check that menu. You can remove any menu entry there by simply right-clicking on it and left-clicking Delete.

If you delete something on a goof, don’t worry because it’s in the Recycle Bin where you can put it back in case you make a mistake.

Just remember there is no Recycle Bin ability with the registry editor. Your only means of restoring something you deleted is by importing a .reg file you exported as explained above.

Admittedly this information is old, however I had to reinstall XP on a laptop recently and after updating it with SP3 and whatever other patch/fix I needed to install, the Language Bar appeared in the taskbar.

It’s a safe assumption to say the vast majority of Windows users have absolutely no use for this – myself included. So here’s how to get rid of it.

Go to the Control Panel.

Click the Regional and Language Options icon.

Click the Languages tab. You see this:

Click the Details button.

You see this:

Click the Language Bar button at the bottom.

You see this:

Uncheck Show the Language bar on the desktop.

And that’s it.

Eraser is a secure file deletion utility. It works with any version of Windows (from Windows 95 to Vista) and even DOS.

When you delete a file from your computer it is not securely erased. There are ways it could be retrieved. However with Eraser, when a file is deleted using the utility, a file is deleted and overwritten several times with patterns. This makes it nearly impossible to retrieve a file deleted just by pressing the delete key on your keyboard.

Cool things about Eraser

• Runs on any version of Windows (as noted above)
• Has both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
• Has both an “On-Demand” mode and a “Scheduler” mode. You can do right-now deletion or scheduled deleting (could be handy for clearing browser cache).
• Free
• Very easy to use
• Fast
• Puts itself in the system tray so you know when it’s running (and when it isn’t)

Who would benefit most from Eraser?

People who use shared computers would benefit most from this utility. If the other people who use the same computer you do are nosy and try to retrieve files you’ve deleted, this utility as said above will make it nearly impossible to retrieve deleted files.

And even if no one else uses your computer but you, one can never be too careful with secure deletion of files.