Comic Transcript
CUSTOMER: How do I delete something embarassing from the Internet?
ALEX: You don’t.
CUSTOMER: What do you mean “I don’t?” That can’t be right.
ALEX: The Internet is distributed. When you sit in your living room and post something on a discussion forum somewhere out there, you’re leaving a record of that activity on every single server sitting between you and that forum…
ALEX: … and on top of that, the post is almost immediately archived by Google and a few other search engines, and then copied again on all their backup servers, so even if you delete the original post there are thousands of copies in storage out there, waiting to be found.
CUSTOMER: I see.
(Silence.)
CUSTOMER: How do I change my identity?
