Actually, there is very little you can do to preserve your privacy online or to clean up your computer or phone. That's why this website concentrates on other types of tracking and invasions of privacy.
Consider these threats to your privacy (a partial and ever increasing list)
- Google records all your searches
- Google and others use web bugs to track you
- SSD drives are not secure eraseable
- Cell carriers track your GPS location through tower triangulation 8 times a hour keep it for 6 months
- ISP's record all your web traffic and keeps it for a year, some have been selling this data now
- HTML 5 has introduced new cookie tracking methods
- There are Flash cookies, Evercookies and new forms of cookie tracking popping up all the time
- Facebook is recording all the websites you visit even if you log out of Facebook
- Apple's Safari respawns cookies, gives your location data to websites
- There are log files on Mac's that record all the DNS lookups (aka sites you visited)
- Apple, Microsoft and Google all have been caught violating people's security and privacy, then give some "opt out" selection somewhere that most people don't know or bother with so eventually it just gets removed from lack of attention and outrage.
- Devices from Cellbrite can bypass passwords, encryption and download the entire contents of over 3000 models of cell phones SSD drives in a few minutes.
- There OS X based "nannyware" that can be used by parents, corporations, schools and business that monitor and even watch the screen of others computers, even turn on the microphone and webcam.
- There is Linux based forensic software that can be booted off a disk/USB on Mac's or PC's and everything a person was doing with the machine laid out like a road map. Delete all you want, it still appears.
- There is EFI firmware on Macs that programs can be installed that bypass and work entirely outside of OS X, get online, check your drive and watch your web traffic.
- Apple Mac computers incorportate your personal identification all over the computer, broadcasts the info online and over local networks ("Tim Jones computer")
- Companies, advertising, search engines and others, are in business to profile everyone at a given IP address. Supposedly they can classify your personality within the first dozen or two websites you visit. They do this to target advertising at you that you are most likely to click on, tugging on your beliefs, political view, age and other factors.
- Cell phones can be turned on and into listening devices
- Cameras and microphones on your computer can be turned on and off by a hacker. You will not see any light or other indication that the camera or microphone is on, nor will control panels or other software show the status of the device as on.
You should treat all technology like it is a spy device and don't "tell it" (e.g., click, speak, go somewhere with it) ANYTHING you don't want the world to know. If you carry something electronic with you it is quitely likely to be recording and/or broadcassting your GPS location and sharing that information periodically with one or many others.