From The Tips Box: Cancelling Accounts, USB Dongles


Lifehacker readers offer their best tips for cancelling accounts on annoying web services and editing comments on Lifehacker.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Cancel Accounts By Posting Offensive Content

Thierry figures out a clever way to cancel online accounts:

As per Lifehacker’s recommendations, I recently started cleaning up my online presence, only to notice that a lot of online services don’t offer the option to delete your account or unsubscribe from their mailings. Here’s my solution:

  1. Log into the web site
  2. Change your nickname and all of your information to content that could be offensive to the owners of the website (like “Eat S**t,” without the censoring)
  3. Change your email address to an address generated with a /”temporary inbox” service
  4. Confirm the adress change from that temporary inbox

Now, the culprit is stuck with a useless account with garbage information and your account will probably get banned, thus letting you free.

Obviously you don’t want to get too offensive and actually offend people, because that just isn’t nice. But this is pretty clever — read the terms of service of that account to see what kind of stuff will get you banned permanently, then go for it (you could even report your own account to move the process along).

Keep Small USB Dongles In Your Computer and Never Lose Them Again

Jim doesn’t mess with tiny USB dongles:

I have a Logitech mouse that I occasionally use with my laptop when I travel, and its receiver is very very small — sticking out only a few mm from my laptop. This is great when I have it plugged in, but it’s very easy to lose! So, I just keep it in my laptop all the time. If I have to unplug it to free up a port, I’ll put it in my pocket, but otherwise it stays plugged in all the time, whether I’m using the mouse or not. It still fits in my laptop sleeve just fine, and I’m much less likely to lose it!

Picture: MiNe/Flickr

Master Your Interviews By Noting What You Want to Portray

Ronan always remembers what he wants to show off in a job interview:

Keep the end game in mind. Before phone and in-person interviews, I like to use this trick: Think of three characteristics you would like to portray during the interview (creative, analytical, polished, intelligent, interested, whatever!). Write those three attributes at the top of your notes, and as you glance down at them during the interview, you’ll have a great reminder of how you want to present yourself.

Picture: Ted Murphy/Flickr


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