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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.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
could be classified a delusional state.
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.
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.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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.
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