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.
The TOS say they can keep it, perhaps this just deletes your login and deactivates your account
... the only winning move is not to play.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
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;
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.
Facebook has had a (generally difficult) way of deactivating your account for years (all along?). But their TOS say that they reserve the right to keep your data forever. TFA is implying that this may have changed and that deleting your account now may in fact remove your data from their servers. Personally I'm not holding my breath.
While I agree that TFA seems a bit speculative I don't think the OP is trolling. I think enough of us on /. have taken an interest in FB's over reaching grab on people's personal data that even speculation on it changing (esp. for the good) is newsworthy. (IMHO of course...)
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
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.
Please tell me how to delete my Slashdot account. Bonus points for telling me how I can delete the data including every post I've made.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
Connection to me and vice versa can be done using traditional means especially email.
Oh the nativity of youth. When email becomes a traditional communication I know I'm getting old.
Damn right!
I won't be satisfied until the delete button releases nanites which crawl into the backups, and REALLY delete my profile.
I have recently signed up for facebook because my friends stopped calling and texting people and just started posting "I'll be at blah blah blah at 8pm tonight, come along". I was missing out on a lot of fun things I could possibly be doing because I didn't have an account, so now I have one.
Sorry, can't let this one go. "Naivete"
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
When I filed for divorce, my name, my soon-to-be-ex's name, my current address, my martial status, my soon-to-be-martial-status was all made a matter of permanent public record.
Anybody can go to the state's court website and look it up, in perpetuity.
At least with Facebook, I got to consent to the privacy loss.
They promise to delete your account within 14 days without active use. (if you login, you reactivate your account.)
See delete account
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Slashdot is a different beast, though. It wasn't started in a model that encouraged using real names/identities -- ie, using your .edu email address specifically to connect with people at your school. Registered slashdot users also tend not to be complete morons, and there is a lack of many features which morons find attractive, such as the ability to post pictures of ourselves shotgunning bear while holding a joint in one hand and an under-age girl in the other. You know, stuff like that.
A few months ago I started skunking my FB data, then removing it. Last week I deleted the account (there was a way to do it before they made it obvious). In FB's attempt to attract more users and build a "platform," they've just made it slightly less horrible than MySpace. I got phone numbers and email addresses for the friends that mattered and for whom I wasn't already in possession of the information, then just slipped away. Do you have any idea how much more time I have to waste on Slashdot again now that I don't have any competing sites?
I have recently signed up for facebook because my friends stopped calling and texting people and just started posting "I'll be at blah blah blah at 8pm tonight, come along". I was missing out on a lot of fun things I could possibly be doing because I didn't have an account, so now I have one.
That's the same reason I deleted mine. Kid whom sat at the same lunch table as me in 8th grade posted every single time he entered or left a restaurant or bar (kind of like a manual foursquare). I guess I could go alone, unfortunately he now lives almost 3000 miles away. Dude I worked with a decade ago posts every time he goes to the gym, for motivation, I guess. I guess I could go along, unfortunately he lives 200 miles away. Same deal with the guy who was my high school physics lab partner, now living about 100 miles away.
When I got rid of all the pseudo-spammers and ignored all my far away "old friends" there wasn't really enough left to bother keeping the account... So I used this "new" feature in May to delete it, and nobody seems to care except my wife.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Registered slashdot users also tend not to be complete morons
Do you also have the "Apple" section blocked?
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).
The Slashdot user ID was made to require people to use the same name/identity... Prior to that time, people could enter in whatever name they wanted (different for each post even), and people would often pretend to be Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, etc. I personally think it was more interesting back then because there were flamewars between famous computing people. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
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.
Marriages are in the public record, too. Did you complain about that when you got hitched?
Check out my world simulator thingy.
So hide him.
If he ever decides to send you a message, write on your wall, or comment on one of your posts, you’d see it. In the meantime, you don’t have to read all of his dumb status updates. Just click the convenient Hide button and tell it to hide him from your news feed.
Sheesh some people make things so difficult.
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
Well, in fairness, most people are quite youthful at the time of their nativity.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
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.
Registered slashdot users also tend not to be complete morons
Do you also have the "Apple" section blocked?
There's an "Apple" section??? Never noticed...
The problem is that you need an account to keep tabs on what other people are posting about you. For example, if someone tags you in a photo but you don't have an account you can't delete the tag, or even know it is there if their photos are not public.
My solution is to create an account in your name but fill it with obvious fabrications. My date of birth is listed as 01/01/1901 and I don't have a profile photo. People I know still respond to friend requests so I can keep an eye on them and if anyone tries to tag me I hear about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Maybe if his wife was really ugly...
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.
Disregard that! I suck cocks!
If the delete option works, great. Personally, the split second another comparable service comes out that catches maybe 5 or so of my closets friends... I am gone. I probably won't delete my account, but I will purge the ever living crap out of it and leave it as a glorified address book page.
The issue with Facebook is that it has lost my trust. Facebook doesn't do what I want it to do anymore. Facebook started as a thing for college students to connect and share college studentie stuff. Now, my freaking grandmother is one Facebook. Yeah, I can sit around and fiddle with my privacy settings and make a special grandma list that I have to remember to use every time I wont to post something that she might hurt her 70 year old sensibilities, but it is a pain in the ass.
It is going to be pretty easy to get me to jump ship. Just give me a social networking site that lets me have a split personality. We naturally have split personalities. The face you present in a meeting at work is different from the one you present to your mom and different from the one you present to your friends on Friday night. Facebook absolutely sucks at making this distinction. Not only does Facebook suck at making this decision, they keep desperately trying to get you to post ALL your information to the world. The first social networking site with a clean interface and that understands that we all have split personalities is going to stand over Facebook's bloated corpse. They don't even need to destroy Facebook, just offer up something convincing enough that I will use the alternative and Facebook. A social networking site that lets me cleanly and smoothly deal with my co-workers and grandmother wanting to be 'friends' in addition to my real friends is going to have Facebooks head on a pike.
Where is the -1, Idiot moderation option? You didn't consent to, you insisted upon divorce (as evidenced by your claim that you filed). Being married or not actually has legal consequences for people outside your bedroom and living room and thus is not at all a private matter.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1