Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Adds Delete Account Option
roseability writes "Facebook have quietly added the ability to delete you account. 'Deactivate Account', under Account Setting, has become 'Deactivate or Delete Account', and when checked it purports to permanently delete your account and all information you have shared. Facebook is actually willing to erase your data permanently? They must be counting on very few people doing so." Mixed reports on this: perhaps this is a limited test?
Well that took long enough. Real life's had this ever since cyanide.
It doesn't matter, all the privacy activists will find something wrong with it / find something else to fight about anyway.
this is a means to flag the account as "very interesting" to the people who want to collect data? Poisoning the data is probably the best approach since it makes the data as a whole less valuable. As long as the poisoned data looks plausible, then nobody knows the real data from the fake data.
The TOS say they can keep it, perhaps this just deletes your login and deactivates your account
[citation needed]
Seriously, where the hell are the links?
... the only winning move is not to play.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
The post sounds kind of troll-ish to me. Why is this so shocking? Pretty much every internet club out there gives you the ability to delete your account. Why would Facebook be the exception? Maybe I'm missing something. It's just seems normal that if you create an account you have the ability to delete it if you want to.
To more changing of privacy controls and what can be made private out form under users who had already selected some strong privacy settings or are trying to select new settings?
"If you don't like our changes to the privacy policy, you have 15 days to press the 'Delete Account Pmernanently' button, and then none of your currently private information will be shared."
Even if it's truly deleted, I'll bet the data is out there in an archive somewhere.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
They have always had an option to delete your account or deactivate. They just made finding the delete function easier now.
typedef DeactivateAccount DeleteAccount;
I have never seen any other web service that offers a self-service delete option? Why are they so hesitant? I have tried to get a few online accounts deleted over the years and it varies in difficulty, but each time it required an email or online chat exchange with a real person.
Our one friend who killed herself's account. That would be nice. Having her profile continually show up with the "you haven't talked to X in a while send them a message and reconnect with them" box. Doesn't actually make facebook win any sensitivity awards in my book.
Finally, now I can finally free myself from the horror...
No! I can't do it, I need my Mafia Wars and FarmVille, I'm going to die!
For sure...I am not into Facebook and do not yet see the reason why I should join it. Connection to me and vice versa can be done using traditional means especially email.
Most importantly, many times, I just need to be left alone by especially by those from my past.
I believe most of the 500,000,000 folks on Facebook are not doing anything useful on the site. Most of those accounts are just 'feel good accounts'. Right?
i just "re-activated" my long deactivated account in the hopes of "deleting" it finally. i only had the de-activate option.. no delete available on my screen.
I don't see the delete option on my account. It just allows deactivation.
Will this delete the comments you make on other people's pages? What happens to those? How will the conversations you have gotten yourself into be handled?
Right. And even if my account is deleted you could still find traces of me in my friends' pictures, old posts, etc. I imagine the delete account button will just stop gathering new data about you.
It's the start of forgetting!
AT&ROFLMAO
You have always been able to go here to delete your facebook account which was easy to find in google http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account They have only made it simpler for those who take things at face value (pun intended).
It's nice to see Facebook listening to its userbase. Well, the userbase that wants to delete, but you get the idea. Hopefully not the userbase that don't use DubLi!
They have had this option to delete accounts for years now.
I even used it like 4 years ago.
Maybe they just moved the button that starts the process?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I can delete me account, can I?
There was always the option to delete, it was just a bit tricky to find. Bit of a nonstory this, you should check out DubLi for a real scoop.
How does someone who owns data prove that he has deleted every copy of it?
you are old enough to have avoided the facebook boondoggle in the first place
so its a wash
incidentally, discovering the philosophical connection between global thermonuclear war and social networking is both deep and hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's not always true though. In the UK, you can quote the data protection act and request that someone qualified deletes all data relating to yourself.
I've done it many times, normally after they've pissed me off and caused me to waste some of my time. Tell them that an administrator is not qualified, and clicking a 'delete' button is not enough. Offsite backups deleted too.
Maybe they do and maybe they don't. There would be fun and games if they contacted me in the future.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Good advice from a facebook friend, whom I promptly hid.
I have a friend that builds data centers for FB and he claims there are at least ten big ones coming up in the US at this time. It may be a scalability issue for them, I mean, with the exponential growth it has seen and as more people begin to store more and more images out there as they learn to use the system, somethings got to give. Maybe this is there way to get the public to help "prune" the network. If you aren't using this seat, kindly get your ass up and make room for the next user.
This seems like a really good idea. Maybe it's the old fogey in me talking, but I seriously wonder if the Gen Y crowd will collectively wake up and realize that a subset of society pays very close attention to online presence. If they do, it would be a really helpful thing to have a way to instantly wipe out all those embarrassing details.
One thing that I think is different with Facebook compared with previous social networking or online presence opportunities is how easy it is to share information. You don't even have to be a "computer person" to use it; it's all AJAXy and user friendly. Posting drunken photos from the iPhone takes just a few clicks. Because many of the younger users really aren't computer people, or don't have the same sense of privacy, the more puritan among us have plenty of ways to find out about your personal life. In a world where there are 100 applicants for any job, it's just another way to discriminate.
That doesn't even count the situations where people might be out to intentionally destroy your reputation.
One of two things is going to happen -- either people will stop being judgmental as the Gen Y'ers age and this trend of hanging everything about yourself out there will continue, or (what I think is more likely) as people start getting denied jobs, promotions, security clearances and professional licenses, they will start trying to cover up their digital dirt.
Personally - I see the second one happening. As the economy keeps shifting away from manufacturing and labor towards services, corporate jobs will become extremely coveted. Remember, we're pumping millions of people through college - they all have to work somewhere. When HR at BigCorp has 1500 applicants for 100 entry-level positions, they're going to have to start looking at something other than education.
I saw this happen when I was in school many moons ago. I took a lot of classes with people who wanted to go to my university's pharmacy school. The school had a very small number of openings and tons of applicants. If you didn't have a 4.0 GPA, you wouldn't even be considered because they had enough 4.0s to choose from for their slots. The school didn't have Facebook at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were using it now (FYI, in the US, pharmacy is a licensed profession with absolute guaranteed job security and high salaries - this is why the competition is so high.)
It doesn't matter, all the privacy activists will find something wrong with it
No need to "find" something wrong with it. Zuckerberg will provide something wrong sooner or later.
Don't count on this feature as a way to erase traces of your activity or your personal data - while other users will not be able to access your profile any longer, the authorities and FB personnel can still track everything you did. Don't even try to alter all fields in your profiles - I bet all data is versioned, thus it's too easy to see a pristine version of your profile.
Why are they storing all your data forever? First of all, very few people will do that so there's no point breaking DB connections, secondly, your profile is very valuable for the authorities and advertisers.
I'd swear they've had this option for ages. It was just buried in a non-obvious place.
One of Facebook's options is to keep all the status updates and pictures for 10-20 years, then republish everything. For a "deletion fee", they will keep all your high school and college pictures, raunchy status updates, and other potentially embarrassing information off the internet. Most wouldn't care, but I'm sure there's plenty who want a high profile job that would pay dearly to keep that hidden.
AFAIK, it's completely legal, and already impossible to stop, they own the data and you (or someone you know) voluntarily published it once. It's pretty likely that they'll be replaced by the next big social media site or at least won't be doing nearly as well financially in 10-20 years as they are now, if they still exist. And if they go bankrupt, anyone could buy the data and do the same thing.
I don't think it's likely, but it is possible.
This sentence no verb.
Facebook have quietly added the ability to delete you account
Did it come at the expense of the ability to grammar check their own news releases? I did not know that good grammar and common sense were mutually exclusive.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The big question is will they allow you to recreate an account after you deleted your current one? I know for example Xbox Live service will not let you re-register the same gamertag once the account has been closed. Even if you can prove, with all the payment information, that the account was once yours, no old accounts can be reactivated. If that is not the case for facebook some people may just dump their whole account and start fresh. This would be great for people who posted all their slutty/party photos and needs to clean up their page in order to hunt for jobs. Saves them the trouble of having to set their security on all their photos. Some people post some shocking stuff.
this coming after the previous article was this one
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/25/2221200/The-End-of-Forgetting
I created my FaceBook account about 9 months ago, and this option was there back then. In fact my girlfriend used it back around christmas to start a new account with just friends she knows personally.
You're comparing Facebook to thermonuclear war? Give me a break.
No. He is comparing it to global thermonuclear war. ;)
Reply to That ||
for the pointer, it seemed to work, although they insist on keeping it a zombie for two weeks so I can re-activate it.
well, as much as i like to spit on fb privacy fuss... the truth is that you could actually delete your account for a long time now.
:)... while this might be true, it's simply silly... i don't want my nickname to hang around... maybe i have ppl that know me by my nickname... it might be a thousand things. if one can create it, he/she should be able to destroy it.
few months ago i did right that. ok, there wasn't a button, but if someone searched for something like, ummm, 'how to delete an account', he would get a link that would do just that among other answers.
and regarding the ability to remove slashdot account... someone wrote that user doesn't gain anything from removing slashdot account
let's be honest, in that aspect is fb one step ahead.
The Data Protection Act allows organisations to keep data about you even without your consent if it is necessary for their business. A good example would be credit agencies - if they had to delete data on request it would be easy to wipe your history clean and people with a history of defaulting on debts would be able to clear the slate any time they wanted to. Banks also need to keep records for (IIRC) 6 years to meet legal requirements etc.
You can request a copy of all information held about you and that information is corrected in the case of errors, but you can't force someone to delete everything they have on you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Just create a website using any number of providers and use email for communication. If you must use farcebook then you are definitely too stupid to even exist let alone use a computer. Learning how to code in HTML is not that hard at all.
Facebook is just anticipating a European decision, since this "deleting" instead of "disactivating" option will be required soon. They don't want bad advertisement, so they act quickly. It's actually a very good idea, and a smart move from them.
I'm sure I noticed this on Facebook quite a few months ago.
Would it make a difference that mine is a UK account rather than a US one?
(Different privacy requirements for different countries).
Or am I just crazy and it was never there?!
Why have I read the title as:
Facebook ads delete account option ?
Deleting all your posts can mess up other peoples' conversations. It's not really ethical.
Making all your posts anonymous might be a reasonable compromise.
It could be a spin on the Godfather line:
"Leave the account, delete the person."
I'd like to point out that you were always able to permanently delete your account (for a while now anyway)
However, it was hidden within their 'help' files and you had to search for 'delete my account' to actually get to the link.
Glad they made it more obvious now.
What's to stop you from deleting fields you don't like and/or filling them with fake but reasonable data? That's what I did.
I think in a way, having a carefully controlled Facebook account has more advantages than disadvantages. Give it a unique e-mail address, study what happens with that address. Post that you like ponies and rainbows. Have some fun with it and learn. ;)
That's how I got rid of my account a while ago!
If Facebook is anything like major news organizations, you can probably get them to believe someone is dead by defacing Wikipedia.
Just make the Wikipedia page (using the Tor network of course):
"Joe Victim was a firefighter in $facebook_location. He is famous for saving a group of orphans from a fire which is why the existence of this page is not suspicious. He died of lung cancer on April 5th 2010, leaving $facebook_spouse_and_children."
And then quickly before the moderators swoop in (remember the page won't be up for long, don't waste time!):
"Facebook, could you please delete the page of my brother Joe Victim who passed away earlier this year? (wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Victim). It would really ease the grieving process for the family and his friends.
Thank you
John Victim"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Facebook is not the future of communication. Facebook is a fad.
Maybe online social networking is the future of communication, but Facebook is not, just as we're all not using 2MB SMTP-only-accessible ISP-provided email accounts today.
Facebook is the AOL email address of social networking. Hot fad right now, historical footnote and geek punchline later.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I opened a Facebook account for the purpose of promoting my music. When I finally had the account set up, I realized that it was of no use to me whatsoever. I realized later that the link for setting up an account for artists/musicians is actually pretty hard to find and is a separate kind of account. When I tried to delete 'me' account I just got the option to deactivate not delete. I thought that very strange and a bit unsettling. What took them so long to add the option to delete?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
If I only had a Facebook account I would try it out. Maybe I should register just so I can test it.
facebook hasnt given ME this delete option yet.
This is not showing up on my account.
Facebook makes large donation to the Internet Archive!
If you maintain a database that holds information that can be deduced to pertain to individual people, then, according to Dutch law you have to obey certain rules. For example, you may only use the information in the database for the purpose that it was given to you. This makes selling your customer database illegal.
One of the rules state that unless strong objections against deleting a person from the database can be proven, a request to remove information from that database MUST be honored. Strong objections would for example hold when someone who has a debt at the bank requests his information to be deleted from the bank's database. Or a bad credit record.
So my guess is that Facebook is finding more and more countries that require them to follow this sort of rules, they cannot prove "strong objections" so they have to comply. So instead of having a customer support department that manually has to obey these requests one at a time, they now allow the users themselves to trigger the deletion of their account.
Even after you delete-n-deactivate (DND) your account, if you login again the account auto-reactivates. I've had a few "So-and-so is still waiting for your reply" emails from facebook since DND-ing fbook account. Sneaky...
Finally!!!
About 4 years ago I opened an account and then started to receive all sort of SPAM. I tried to figure out how to delete it and just gave up trying. I sent a help request to "someone" and never got back a response. I was relling a friend about this 2-3 months ago and he produced instructions that were well lets say complicated. At LAST!!! I was able to delete my account and I have not looked back. A POX on all the jerk companies that think everyone has a face book account.