Recently I decided to take stock of the various websites for which I have an access account, consisting of either a username and password or, more commonly, an email address and password.
This was driven in part by my setting out to test 1Password, a password manager service based in Canada, but also by a need to address the bad habit of reusing some passwords across multiple sites.
For more than a decade I’ve been using a British product, My1Login, as my password manager. I will hold off on a comparison of the two password services for now and focus instead on another aspect that surfaced as I began testing 1Password.
As I set out to test 1Password, I found that I had 232 separate accounts stored in my long-time management program. These covered a wide range of areas, from home services (banking, utilities, etc.), education sites (primarily for physics and computer science), and on to hobby sites (amateur radio, space, weather, etc.).
With the very first site I tested, I came to realize that, as happens with bricks and mortar businesses, some of these web services have shut down, likely after declaring bankruptcy. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer number of sites in my password manager that now no longer existed.
Fifty sites! And I’m not quite through examining all 232 of my sites. That’s 50 sites that have vanished, taking with them my username/email address and a password, perhaps for some even a birthdate. In some cases of cloud storage services, they’ve also taken data I was storing with them. None of this lost data was of particular importance, as I was only testing those storage sites.
Here then is a small selection of the now 50+ sites for which I had accounts at one time and that have now moved into oblivion, or in a small number of cases, have completely rebranded:
- 1CheapDomains: a very early web domain registrar, based in Australia.
- Songza: a once very popular Canadian music service that was acquired by Google.
- Boxee.tv: a very early streaming service built around a uniquely shaped “box.” Acquired by Samsung and shut down.
- Snap.vu: an early site for generating QR codes.
- Wikispaces: a service once wildly popular with educators, shut down in 2019.
- CinemaNow: an early on-demand video streaming service that shut down in 2017. CinemaNow emerged in 1999, more than a decade before Netflix began streaming in Canada.
- Grooveshark: an early music streaming service, shut down after repeated legal action.
- Google Music, also called Google Play Music, shut down and replaced by YouTube Music.
- Klout: social media influencer site that provided freebies to those with high Klout scores.
- LMS Lectrio: a learning management service for schools. The domain name is up for sale for $5,000.
- Mozy: a cloud storage service. Its domain name is now parked.
- Raditaz: another music service, which was briefly very popular for not having song skip limits.
- Shelfari: social cataloguing site built around a virtual bookshelf.
- ShoeboxApp, a.k.a. MyShoeBox: photo storage service: send in a shoebox of photos, slides, and videos, and the company would digitize the analog content.
- YouSendIt (now operating under the name Hightail) for transferring large files, particularly large image files.
- Youblisher: an early online publishing service.
- Vizify: for turning social media posts, particularly tweets, into visual presentations. Very popular for a while, particularly with educators.
- Treo.ca: remember the tolling agency for the Port Mann Bridge?
- Tackk.com: one-page instant web site service. Good at that time but difficult to monetize.
- Jux.com: quick web page creation site and service.
- Delicious.com: bookmark management service.
- PhotoPeach.com: picture-sharing site, still “live” but with a notice that the service has terminated because Flash Player has been discontinued.
- Hitbox.tv: live streaming esports service. Shut down in 2017.
- Cubby.com: cloud storage site, a Dropbox clone, shut down by owner LogMeIn in 2016.
- Instagrok.com: graphical search engine for learners.
- Skydrive.com: Microsoft’s one-time cloud storage service, had to be renamed after a dispute with another business associated with the Sky branding. Lives on as OneDrive.
- Bitcasa.com: another cloud storage company that faltered.
- Rdio.com: music streaming service that was once available in 85 countries. Bankrupt in 2015.
- Symantec.com: once a huge name in the computer security space, split into an enterprise division, acquired by Broadcom, and a consumer division, rebranded as NortonLifeLock.
You get the idea. There is no shortage of once-vibrant internet properties that no longer exist. Who knows what becomes of the customer databases when these companies shut down or are pressed into bankruptcy! Are the databases wiped? Are they resold? Do creditors seize them and resell them, perhaps even on the so-called dark web?
Among the couple of hundred sites then, for which I have or had accounts, only in a handful of instances have I ever encountered an option to delete an account. I’ve written a few sites on occasion asking for an account deletion option, only to be told that there isn’t one.
Given how prevalent password reuse is, it is easy to understand why there is value in the databases of extinct companies. Do yourself a favour. Every now and then check out the internet accounts you have. See if you can shut down accounts you no longer use. If there is no option to delete an account, which almost surely is the case, send a note to the company requesting deletion. And use a unique password for each site or service!
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