Facebook A Black Hole For Personal Info

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has an article on how Facebook is so sticky it is nearly impossible to get loose. While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network. 'It's like the Hotel California,' said Nipon Das, a user who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account. 'You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.' It took Mr. Das two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook's customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das's empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network. Facebook's quiet archiving of information from deactivated accounts has increased concerns about the network's potential abuse of private data, especially in the wake of its fumbled Beacon advertising feature."

Comments

New Idea

[mfh]

I am starting a new website that will build an altar to the Social Insurance number. All you have to do is fill out this little form and give us all of your personal info, and we hang up your Social Insurance number, then calculate your relevance compared to everyone else who uses the service. THIS IS A FREE SERVICE! If you sign up now, you also get a free password check, where you give us your username and password to every website and bank you use and we provide you with your security relevance score! FREE FOR THE NEXT 50 USERS!

Visit our website right now to enroll for free!

Re:New Idea

[Ed Avis]

Heh, your social insurance number site reminds me of one of Jerry Lee Cooper's great computational achievements:

Just the other day, I helped an enterprise client do some work in MSSQL - they had to import LITERALLY DOZENS of customer records from an SQL database into a spreadsheet. We managed to do this quite easily by clicking the mouse for a few hours together, setting the ODBC drivers up using heaps of helpful GUI tools. We then managed to get the spreadsheet to AUTOMATICALLY TOTAL all of the postcodes for the customer records, and even calculate the AVERAGE of the postcodes.
Try doing THAT with your little shareware database !! Hmmph !

Re:New Idea

[ColdWetDog]

Flamebait? Nice to know the mods can still afford their crack.

They wish. It's really the crappy coffee. Let's replace it with Folger's crystals and see if Slashdot notices.

Re:The one lesson

[Farmer Tim]

...don't let anyone take naked photos of you, 'cuz they *will* end up online, and it will be *hilarious*.

I was hoping for "awe inspiring", or at least "impressive". Way to dent a guy's ego...

Re:Easy Solution

[Tribbin]

Yes, so now my would-have-been boss thinks that actually I'm a 15 year old girl who does not know when to use CaPiTaL lEtTeRs.

Take it easy

[Urger]

Is it True?
All Night Long I was worried about this. Is my privacy Already Gone? It made me feel like a Certain Kind of Fool to think that I had put my personal data on a site that would Take It To The Limit in terms of giving away info about me. The Outlaw Man that runs Facebook has erased my Peaceful Easy Feeling. In The Long Run, After the Thrill is Gone, Facebook will learn. Untill then, I won't Get Over It and I Can't Tell You Why.

I've run out of Eagle's songs now....

Re:And how do you delete a SLASHDOT account?

[kellyb9]

and how do you delete a SLASHDOT account? Who'd want to?

Re:hating facebook

[FredDC]

Can someone suggest a cleaner, more useful alternative to facebook that I can try and talk all my friends into joining?

Uh, how about meeting your friends at a *real* place?

Re:It's been done

[bazorg]

ah, yes... the goatse technique...

Re:Easy Solution

[mcmonkey]

When you want to leave, start adding bogus data. Friend people you don't know. Change the bio data. Tag yourself in pictures you aren't in.

Leaving Facebook sounds a lot like what I did when I joined Facebook.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

the loudest judgmental voices are actually the biggest hypocrites

Fuck privacy.

I bet you think "irony" means "sort of like iron".

Re:Good

[mgblst]

Ha,ha,ha,ha....

Injokes are great.

I hope to have one, one day.

One encyclopedia for me

[matt me]

Facebook is a black hole, yet facebook leaks information to the outside. Thanks, Hawking!

Bah

[tm2b]

Just start adding Church of Scientology documents to your profile.

"Let's you and them fight."

Re:Good

[B3ryllium]

Clearly, it makes them offspring of Jonathan Frakes.

Re:You have no privacy anyway

[lewko]

When I google my name (my real name, not 'wiredog') it returns zero results

So, Mr Aoiuvoasihuashiuerqkaskjas, we meet at last!