Ask Slashdot: Getting an Uncooperative Website To Delete One's Account?

First time accepted submitter trentfoley writes "I've been trying to clean up my digital life (insert joke about having a life) and have run into a situation I fear is too common. Many social websites, nextdoor.com in particular, do not allow a user to delete the account they created. In the case of nextdoor.com, their privacy policy makes it clear that the user owns all of their data. If this is true, I should have the right to destroy that data. These lines of thought brought to mind the recent privacy defeat in Europe. Does the defeat of the EU's Right-to-be-Forgotten legislation bring a practical end to this debate?" I've read complaints today from Nextdoor.com users who say their data was sold, too.

Comments

call them

[Karmashock]

I've gotten a lot of sites that don't let you delete accounts to delete the account by simply calling them. Their numbers are often hard to find but get them on the phone and ask nicely.

Re:call them

[bill_mcgonigle]

Common advice for getting that big social networking site to respond to requests is to mail a paper letter to their HQ, possibly attn: legal affairs. Apparently the success rate is very high.

Re:call them

[khasim]

And if that doesn't work then change as much as you can. Your email address should be the easiest. Then any other personal information that you can alter. If they won't delete it then make it worthless to them.

And this is another reason to fight against the current trend of requiring real names for accounts.

Re:call them

[lister king of smeg]

Common advice for getting that big social networking site to respond to requests is to mail a paper letter to their HQ, possibly attn: legal affairs. Apparently the success rate is very high.

another good way is if there is a place to put age set is as under 12 many will delete it immediately due to law concerning keeping data about children.

Re:call them

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never given correct information to any website to start. It was completely obvious that they would use that information to their advantage as that is what capitalist corporations *do*.

Was there ever an advantage to me having the information with them? Is the information needed for them to perform a service for me? If the answer to those questions is no, then they get BS info, and a lower level password I keep in a protected space with all the rest.

If a company truly needs correct information from me, then I'm considerably more careful. However, that is actually quite rare. In most cases I can obfuscate and lie about my identity, even with paid services. Although they are working to plug those "meta" holes by heavily restricting just what you can purchase with prepaid credit cards, money orders, etc.

Social Networking is just plain dangerous when the information is centralized, and I never fell for it. It didn't matter what they were offering. I'm only interested in a completely decentralized, encrypted, p2p model similar to OneSocialMedia and Diaspora. Basically, if the infrastructure is inherently resistant towards surveillance and monetization by hostile parties (I consider advertising and marketing to be extremely hostile to my life) then I'm interested.

This post is a question about how to mitigate or outright reverse the damage to the person's privacy. I'm not sure that is really possible at all. More than likely, it's Pandora's box.

The answer is to have never danced with devil in the pale moonlight in the first place.

Here, just like other places, I purposefully choose identities that have conflicting data sets when you search for it. I know that I'm not 100% protected, but if they want to violate my privacy, they will have to work pretty damn hard to do it.

Re:call them

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI:

Entity Name: NEXTDOOR.COM, INC.
Entity Number: C3063398
Date Filed: 01/24/2008
Status: ACTIVE
Jurisdiction: DELAWARE
Entity Address: 101 SPEAR STREET SUITE 230
Entity City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94105
Agent for Service of Process: WILSON CHAN
Agent Address: 101 SPEAR ST STE 230
Agent City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94105

Re:call them

[zugmeister]

Oblig XKCD

Re:call them

[AmiMoJo]

Be prepared to spend a long time on the phone though, and even then they often won't really delete your account. I tried this with Apple recently as I had an ancient account from back when I had an early iPod a decade ago. It took half an hour on the phone, I had to listen to endless dire warnings about losing all the data on "my" iCloud account that they made for me without my knowledge or ever agreeing to the terms and conditions. Endless stuff about how all my iTunes purchases with DRM would commit suicide (I never made any) and how all my devices would stop working (battery died years ago, can't be bothered to pry the thing open to replace it, if you can even buy 3rd gen iPod batteries any more).

After all that they finally agreed to delete the account, but added that I would never be able to sign up with the same email address again... So they were not really deleting it. My personal details are still on file somewhere. In the new year I'm going to write to them to demand they expunge everything.

Long story short, we need that EU right to be forgotten and some strong enforcement.

bit of a tricky question with forums

[Trepidity]

Discussion lists traditionally don't give you a right to delete previous postings: Usenet and mailing list archives are forever. One rationale is simply technical inability (archives aren't controlled by a central authority), but there's also a sense that deleting miscellaneous posts from archives fragments the record of past conversations.

So, Nextdoor has forums and discussions. It seems fair to me that they don't retroactively delete posts from those. Therefore they need to maintain some kind of attribution to the now-deleted account. So they can't fully delete the account, in the sense of wiping any traces, but they could just make it a non-operable "deactivated" account that still has the posts attributed, but can't be used anymore. They might agree to hide the profile in this case, as well. Turns out, that is precisely what they do support.

Re:bit of a tricky question with forums

[lgw]

George Lucas was (at least until recently) the owner of the Star Wars Christmas Special. That doesn't give him the right to destroy all tapes made of it in the world. (Much as he wanted to - rumor has it he bought up and destroyed a great many copies before the digital age made it pointless)

Ownership isn't the right to "unpublish".

Re:bit of a tricky question with forums

[Chrisq]

How does being the owner of something entitle you to someone else being required to provide the means to destroy it?

That's what "ownership" means. You get to control it.

Not necessarily. If you own a listed historic building then destroying or altering it is a criminal offence. There are quite a few other examples where you can own something but not legally destroy it.

social media site trust

[turkeydance]

could be classified a delusional state.

Do what you can

[nospam007]

Change all your details in the account settings, name, address, email etc.

Then, deactivate the account like they tell you in their help on their site.

http://help.nextdoor.com/customer/portal/articles/805273-deactivating-your-account

That's about it. Not even Slashdot will erase your old posts when you decide to quit here, nobody does that, it would ruin all the past conversations.

Violate the TOS

[crmanriq]

Well. As a last resort.
1) Change all of your user data that you can. Edit your profile so that all of the data is either blank, or not yours at all.
2) Edit your age down to below 13 years old. This may kick in automatic account privacy settings.
3) If none of this works, then look at the TOS and find things that they don't want you to do. (ie, Wikipedia freaks out if you mention suing them on any forum. A TOS might make it a violation to badmouth the parent company, or to solicit other users. You might think of creating a couple of throwaway accounts, and getting into a royal flamewar with your invisible clones. Call them really bad names. Threaten to sue them.)
4) Do not let number three go into the realm of anything illegal. Don't post porn in public fora. You simply want to make yourself unwelcome at this location.

Ownership

[jklovanc]

There are many comments about the ownership of the posts and how if the poster owned the posts he should be able to delete them. I have a different view.

From the Nextdoor Member Agreement:

Content. You retain all ownership rights to the text, photos, video and other content you submit to Nextdoor.com (collectively, your “Content”). We can publish your Content in your neighborhood website or to nearby neighborhoods as described in our privacy policy.

Notice they say rights. The poster owns the posts in that the poster is responsible for the content and the site can not sell or copy the posts to other sites. Those are the general copyright laws. The issue comes in that by posting on the site the owner has given a copy to someone else, much like giving someone a book. The poster still owns the right to the post but not ownership of that specific copy.

This is from the Privacy Policy:

Data Modification/Deletion. You can delete your account by contacting us. Alternatively, you can delete most types of individual Content items. Deleting your account will delete all Content you provided, except that we may choose to retain Content incorporated into the neighborhood's conversations (and, as applicable, nearby neighborhoods); and we may attribute that Content to your name even after you depart. If we allow you to change neighborhoods on our site, we may retain your conversation contributions in your old neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods (and keep the attribution to your name) but allow you to move your profile to your new neighborhood. If you are the subject of an unauthorized profile, please contact us.

It looks pretty explicit that they will retain conversations.

Here's a thought

[ArcadeMan]

If you don't want your life on the net, stop registering with your real information.

Re:Abine has a service for this

[Burz]

Its called 'DeleteMe' and you can check with them to see if they can help you with particular sites.

This is the same group that makes the anti-tracking browser addon 'DoNotTrackMe'.

Seems there are modtrolls who don't want people to know about DeleteMe...

Slashdot won't delete your account either

[craigminah]

Slashdot won't delete your account either