Facebook Will Harass You Mercilessly If You Try To Break Up (slate.com)

schwit1 shares a summary from PJ Media: Breaking up with Facebook is apparently as difficult as breaking up with a bad boyfriend or girlfriend who won't accept your decision. That's the experience Henry Grabar of Slate had when he stopped signing on. He stopped logging in on June 6 and stayed off Facebook for ten days. He had been a member for over ten years and this was the longest period he had remained off the social network. But Facebook didn't leave him alone. He received 17 email messages in a span of nine days urging him to return.

Grabar is not alone in trying to wean himself off Facebook for various reasons. Some do it because they realize it can be a waste of time, while others do it because of the company's inability to protect (or lack of interest in protecting) its members' personal data. The company has mistakenly released data of millions of its members and friends of members to third parties, and many of them have used the data for illicit purposes. While Facebook says they are not losing members, some recent statistics paint a different story. According to a Pew study, only 51 percent of U.S. teenagers use the service now, down from 71 percent in 2015. This was the first time the numbers have fallen. The frequent messages reinforced Grabar's decision to stay off the platform. Some of the messages included photo updates from his friends; liked posts from groups he belonged to; and comments about a news article that was posted to a group he belonged to.

Comments

Bamboozlement

[Anonymous Coward]

I left many years ago. I keep getting the occasional reset your password email, with a link to click if I didn't request the password reset. Guess what's the first thing they ask me when I click that link... Sigin in.

Re:Bamboozlement

[Anonymous Coward]

I left probably 7-8 years ago. I think back then the closing was easier. I don't remember how I closed it but I think it took a few months of waiting until I could not log in anymore. I only had the account for about less than a year and saw the huge potential for wasting time. I think all in all I spent probably 30-40 h total on FB.

Re:Bamboozlement

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never used facebook

Re: Bamboozlement

[Zero__Kelvin]

He isn't making it up. I tried to delete my account last year and had the same experience but worse. After not logging in for over a month one day I clicked on a link from a Google Search that was someone's FB account and I got automatically logged into my account that they were supposed to have deleted weeks earlier. There is basically no way to ever delete your account with the GUI following their instructions. I'm guessing if you contact customer support you *might* have better luck.

Re: Bamboozlement

[postbigbang]

You expected their instructions to be useful?

I left Jan 1. Like you, I received lots of cloying come-back messages.

Fuck these dirtbags. I went so far as to delete the password from my browser's cache. I'm not going back. This frat-boy-ish network's management is worse than United or American Airlines.... perhaps even worse than Comcast.

You're the product, until you aren't.

Re:Bamboozlement

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what's the first thing they ask me when I click that link... Sigin in.

Wow. Thing is, most people will fall for that, or similar "dark pattern" tricks.

Re:Bamboozlement

[fuzznutz]

I'm pretty sure the primary purpose of Facebook is to share pro-Trump posts. That's one of the many reasons I left.

I guess it depends on your "friends." I only have an account to keep in touch with my high school classmates and I have two that relentlessly post pro-Trump stuff. I have about 20 or so that post anti-Trump stuff relentlessly. I have considered blocking them both, but I only log on about once a month. It never fails though, you would think I log on every day because the crap is always exactly the same from the same suspects every single time.

I don't care about your damn dog.
I don't care where you went out to dinner last night.
I get it, you hate Trump.
I get it, you love Trump.
I don't find your humorous meme shitpost funny.
Sorry your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend left you.
Go see doctor and quit complaining.

And I can absolutely concur. When you don't log in for a few days, they send emails at least one or twice a day reminding you of "all you missed."

Re: Bamboozlement

[terrycarlino]

They keep shadow accounts on people who never join Facebook. Do you really think they're ever going to throw away data that they've collected on people they actually already have the name of?

The most they're likely to do is make an account inactive so that you can't log into it anymore. They'll continue to collect data on you and if by some chance you ever log in again it will all be waiting for you. So it's a service. Right?

Re: Bamboozlement

[ArmoredDragon]

It depends on what you set your email preferences to. I never did use facebook much, but I always kept getting emails about how so-and-so posted a photo I was tagged in, or liked what the fuck ever, or commented on a post from somebody I don't even know. It never stopped until I was sick of them flooding my inbox and changed the preferences to block all forms of emails.

People know that if they need to get ahold of me, then don't try to message my facebook account.

Re:Bamboozlement

[Anonymous Coward]

May have to try a little harder than that. You can't close the account just by requesting it - like you can with most other services. But you can:

* Post porn. Easy to find on the Internet, is against FB policy, will get you kicked out. If you don't want to be too weird, find some pretty nudies.
* If you can't bring yourself to post porn, consider racism. Something really vile & stereotypical about various minorities. This too can be found on the net, if you have no fantasy. You had better not regret and want to come back though.

Re: Bamboozlement

[datavirtue]

Control, like the control you have over a container ship. When the weather is nice and everything is working correctly you feel in control. Reality? You are never really in control.

Re: Bamboozlement

[TheRaven64]

If someone wants to have fun, they should set up an automated system that allows people to send Facebook a right to be forgotten notice under the GDPR and provides a record of who sent it. They might not delete the data, but they're liable for very large fines if the EU discovers that they didn't comply.

Re:Bamboozlement

[Darinbob]

I haven't left Facebook, but I still get messages telling me to come back!
Sometimes I get an email about what's happened while I was away (for a whole two days).
If I type in the password wrong even once, I immediately get an email offering to help me logged back on. This shows up sometimes before I've even finished typing in a password a second time.

Not only is leaving Facebook like breaking up with someone, staying with Facebook is like having a crazy-girlfriend/needy-boyfriend.

Re: Bamboozlement

[4partee]

You're the product until you're the victim.

they "trust me"

[Anonymous Coward]

dumb fucks

Just create a spam email address

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard is it? Change to a spam email address before breaking up with a service

Re:Just create a spam email address

[Mr0bvious]

So some third party can take over your account and continue to live your online Facebook life for you?

Solid plan there.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[Anonymous Coward]

So some third party can take over your account and continue to live your online Facebook life for you?

Now that is actually a solid plan. I wonder, can you sell your FB life on the Bay? Probably breaches ToS, so we are talking darkweb.

Only problem, is you won't easily be able to see what your FB friends make of the changed persona. Sad.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[scsirob]

That's what I do all the time. Got my own domain, with a few email accounts but unlimited alias ability.

Whenever I must register for something with company-x, I create an email alias 'company-x@myowndomain.com'. If company-x gets breached, sells my data or simply starts spamming me, I can now stop emails coming in whenever I want by removing the alias.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[default luser]

Or you could just simplify your life and create auto-sort filters. I created a Facebook folder in my Hotmail account years ago, and I've just forgotten that it's there.

No control freak domain ownership required :)

Re:Just create a spam email address

[johnsie]

His method makes more sense than just filters. With a catch-all address you can still have the filters, but more importantly you can see which company a third party company got your email address from.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[mikael]

This is a good way. It's not just Facebook that get's a bit clingy. A lot of these online job boards and other websites do the same thing. Even if you have unsubscribed, they still send you some clickbait with annoying messages with an unsubscribe button at the bottom. But you then have to login and/or create an account in order to delete it. But they may just want to verify your email address as well as your postcode and address. So the only way is a disposable burner email address that will disappear in six hours.
 

Re:Just create a spam email address

[CanadianMacFan]

Every mail account already comes with a folder for dealing with mail from Facebook. It's called the Trash.

BTW, what have you forgotten about? The Facebook folder or the Hotmail account?

Re:Just create a spam email address

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's good to get all these notifications and auto-sort them. Sometimes people will delete their borderline criminal comments after a while and the notification email is nice cryptographically-signed evidence.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[Anonymous Coward]

you can see which company a third party company got your email address from.

And then, upon know who leaked your info you do what? Call them and complain? Take them to court? Yeah, right.

The additional work doesn't amount to any tangible benefit. Just filtering works the same but with less hassle.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[nine-times]

The problem with this method is, a lot of companies will sell your address to spammers. Or they'll alter their marketing messages to make them harder to filter (e.g. changing the address they come from, not keeping any common elements in the subject).

If you make a separate alias per service, it has two benefits:

1. 1) It provides an easier, clearer, and more definitive method of getting rid of crap. You don't even need to filter. If one of your aliases starts getting spam, you kill that alias.
2. 2) You can be pretty certain who sold your email address, and know not to do business with them again.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[butzwonker]

Or just use a well-trained spam filter. I'm using claws-mail with Bogofilter and it filters well enough to remove all messages by Facebook, Ebay, Amazon, LinkedIn, etc. If I buy something or subscribe to some new service I have to check the spam filter, of course, but that's no problem.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[samwichse]

Even easier...

Facebook email? Mark as spam.

Do that to three of their messages and your gmail box will be forever FB free.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[GNious]

GMail supposedly can do the same : add +@gmail.com should work

eg scsirop+facebook@ ....

Re:Just create a spam email address

[Darinbob]

For Sale: Facebook account, 2 posts, 7 friends, $10,000 OBO.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[mydots]

I have been using my own registered domain with a unique email address for every company or website I use for over 16 years now. The mailserver is setup for a catch-all so I don't have to maintain individual aliases.

It is funny to see the confused look on people at the store, or hear their confusion on the phone, when they ask for your email address and you say theircompanyname@mydomainname. If they ask about it, I just say I filter emails from different companies that way, even though it is really intended for tracking who gave out my email address. I usually get responses like "Oh", but there are some that think it is cool to have your own domain and having separate email address for everything. Only a few people asked more about it in detail and I will usually go into a little bit of detail about how they would go about setting it up.

I have also had the problem a few times where somecompanyname@mydomainname started receiving spam email and I would complain to that company about giving out my email address. The response would always be that they don't give out email addresses and my response would be either you are lying about it or you have been hacked, which is it?

I also never have the problem of forgetting which email address I used for a company or worry about having to update my email address everywhere because the ISP changed their email domain or just from moving and getting a different ISP.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[ebvwfbw]

Just set up a procmail recipe to redirect it to /dev/null.

Re:Just create a spam email address

[RockDoctor]

And then, upon know who leaked your info you do what? Call them and complain? Take them to court? Yeah, right.

With GDPR, the company has to bear the cost of compliance, not you.

Unless, of course, you're a second-class non-citizen, like an American, or a Briton in 270-something days.

Cause costs

[Anonymous Coward]

How about returning the favor? What would cost Facebook the most money? Maybe using GDPR and send non-standard requests and questions that need to be handled manually.

Re:Cause costs

[johnsie]

And yet here you are, spending your own time trolling the Internets as an AC, looking for people to tell to kill themselves.

Re: Cause costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! What a coincidence! Increasing the divide between US and Europe is one of the published primary goals of current Russian foreign policy!

Ultimately...

[ChoGGi]

Ultimately, the frequent messages reinforced Grabar's decision to stay off the platform.

Later that day I was back on my old computer... and back, with a quick Command-T, F, enter, on Facebook.

?

Mistakenly?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Facebook is in the business of selling my/your information. No mistake at all.

Um

[meglon]

Isn't there a setting where you can get update emails to those things? Cause, turning it off might be a way to stop those emails. Just saying.

I had a facebook account for like 2 weeks to keep up with a specific event. Deleted the account afterwards, and i haven't had an email from them since.

Re:Um

[Richard_at_work]

Yup, this is a non-story, intended to allow people to manufacture outrage rather than reasoned discussion.

If you diligently use Facebook for a length of time, and then stop using it without changing your notification preferences or deleting your account, of course they are going to send you notifications with updates - you *explicitly* allow that through the notification preferences.

I have a Facebook account, I visit it perhaps once a month - I haven't had an email notification from them in years. That's mainly because I manage my notification preferences.

What the OP is trying to do is get Facebook to read their mind and stop sending notifications - and then bitching when instead they follow the accounts notification preferences.

Re:Um

[allo]

But you may think of the default - sending "digests" - as a dark pattern. The default should be "do not bother me" and everything else opt-in.

Re: Um

[houghi]

The person they talk about did not quit, just did not log in. Not shure why they talk about breaking up.

Re:Um

[MrL0G1C]

The default should be what the majority if users want it to be.

Re:Um

[houghi]

Nonexisting?

Re: Um

[Zero__Kelvin]

Part of the process in trying to delete your account is to not log in for an extended period of time. Facebook has decided that if I tell them to delete my account I probably meant keel it active and keep nagging me to log back in. I have tried several times to delete my account but they refuse to actually delete it.

Re:Um

[AmiMoJo]

It's not just normal notifications. If you stop visiting they send you special "please come back, look at what you are missing!" messages that are quite different to the normal notification ones. I turned all the notification emails off and still got these "please come back" ones.

You can turn them off, but it's a lot of clicks and that doesn't lessen the fact that they are using psychological tricks to try to get recovering addicts back on to their site.

Re:Um

[nine-times]

It's not quite that simple. I forget what controls they give you, but I remember there being some level of notifications in Facebook that it would not let you turn off, and it included stuff I didn't want.

Also, Facebook has a history of changing their notification rules and privacy rules without telling you. So you turn off all notifications, and then they create new notification classifications, and all the new ones are turned on by default. I don't know if they've done that recently, but it happened to me once. Ever since, I just auto-delete anything that comes from their domain.

Re:Um

[coofercat]

I used to use Facebook for general purposes for a couple of years. I had it tuned up so it didn't really send me anything, and didn't share more of me than I really needed. When I stopped using it there wasn't a way to actually delete your account (just 'deactivate'), so I didn't bother to do it. I figured after a while they'd get bored and leave me alone. However, I kept getting "A lot's been happening on facebook since you last logged on" emails, with exciting items such as "Julie liked a comment on her post" and "Steve reacted to a comment on Mike's post". Oh, and they consistently told me I had two 'pokes' - even when pokes weren't a thing any more.

I've since fully deleted my account, put the FB blockers in my hosts file and of course marked all emails from them as spam. Now I don't see them any more. I suspect the full deletion of my account was what really did it.

So in short - this guy's got a point - FB do send many, very desperate looking, highly disengaging emails when you don't log on for a while. It's easy to stop them though.

Re:Um

[angel'o'sphere]

If you stop visiting they send you special "please come back, look at what you are missing!" messages
Never got such a message, and most other notifications I have switched off.

Re:Um

[kriston]

Not really a non-story. I have adjusted the settings multiple times. I still get nagging emails from time to time telling me about someone's profile picture change or new photo posted. They are always links to posts that are already 3 to 5 days old.

It's real.

Re:Um

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Three months ago I deactivated my account and I'm not getting any FB emails except when I activate it by logging in from time to time ("Welcome back to FB" it says).

Interestingly, now I am completely off the habit. My account is active again but I'm not -- I go there every 3-4 days for 5-10 minutes, save a couple of good articles and not comment or like anything. And frankly I prefer that to deleting the account -- now I have the best of both worlds: access to good stuff without the habit.

Re:Um

[meglon]

Reading all these comments.... maybe your level of activity when on facebook leads to different results. I admit while i was on it i only posted one time, and pretty much nothing else other than read a few things. If you're a lot more active, maybe skynet.. er.... facebook notices more, and tries harder to keep you around. That wouldn't be a normal setting type thing though.

Re:Um

[allo]

I think it is unreasonable to expect, that the user wants to hear from the site, when he did not visit it for some time. It is of course reasonable for the site to remember the user of it, but that's the dark pattern, let the user opt-out to be spammed to return to the site.

LOL. No.

[aliquis]

https://www.facebook.com/varme...

See it? I don't either.

All you got to do is to try to speak somewhat open-minded about the invasion of your country and the traitors in your parliament on 4-5 accounts of which 2 have more or less the same name. Get 20 or so month long bans in total and off the new "I'll keep this one clean!" and the old 15+ year old account goes.

Ridicule their laws and ideas and break it and you'll get out eventually :)

Re:LOL. No.

[aliquis]

Also I'm pretty sure they won't beg me to come back.

They likely even have a rule against it.

I guess they would still let me do it if I kept clean because they are likely desperate for my and everyone elses data after all ..

But so am I. After mine. And now they have ruined it. So ..

I still get emails

[jetkust]

I never actually used Facebook for anything. And apparently never using Facebook for anything and not logging in for seemingly a decade if not longer means I'm still an "active member" because "YAY YOU HAVE NOTIFICATIONS AND FRIENDS!!!" .. Even though I never gave Facebook any identity whatsoever (except my email address......................).

Re: I still get emails

[Reverend Green]

Yup. FB likes to send lots of completely fake "you have new messages!" emails. FB's shameless duplicity makes it pretty useless as a real communications tool.

I never "deleted" my account, because I know FB won't really delete the data anyways. I just don't use it. Don't ever login unless I have some very specific reason. (I really wish the local standup comedy group would stop posting their show announcements exclusively on Facebook.)

Re:I still get emails

[WinstonWolfIT]

It's trivial to do this in settings. Unfortunate you can't figure this out.

Re: I still get emails

[Zero__Kelvin]

Spoken like someone who knows how it *should* work with no idea how it actually *does* work.

Re: I still get emails

[WinstonWolfIT]

Sounds like someone who never receives emails from Facebook.

It took me 2 years

[shubus]

Yes, it took me 2 years to get off Facebook and and all the other social media crapola. Finally the harassment from Facebook emails and all the others finally stopped--and I found a life.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT!

[TheMiddleRoad]

I did. The emails stopped shortly after.

Re:DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT!

[johnsie]

In Europe they're not allowed to hold your data without permission because of recent GDPR legislation. Oh wait, they just moved millions people's data out of the Ireland data centre to data centre outside of Europe, what a coincidence. Facebook are evil. Do what you can to get out before it's too late. Eventually one way or another all their data will be leaked.

Re:DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT!

[JaredOfEuropa]

Cute... "[Facebook] said the change was only carried out “because EU law requires specific language” in mandated privacy notices, which US law does not." In other words, we can't weasel out of the GDPR but we can out of our own legalese. Apparently LinkedIn and some others did the same. One would almost think that the GDPR forbids them to do certain things with our data that they'd really like doing.

Re:DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT!

[mikael]

In theory. If you see my other post, websites like alumni forums, job boards and recruitment agencies all pretend to have deleted my data. But they still send me emails about job matches. I've even had recruitment agents call me up pretending that they found my resume on a job board, but since I had already deleted my details from that board, they had either saved a copy of my resume or were just phishing.

Junk mail filters work

[chromaexcursion]

I haven't added facebook to my filters, they don't both me that much, but I've consigned several sites to my dust bin.
Thunderbird has levels of filtering: junk mail folder, or straight to the trash.

This is highly misleading.

[ScentCone]

Choosing not to sign in to a platform you've been steadily using, where you are a member of active groups and have friends (that you follow) who post content ... and then getting updates from that platform telling you the sorts of things that are going on with your contacts/interests - that's NOT "trying to break up." Closing your account is "breaking up." Do that, and you'll stop hearing from FB in short order. Playing coy by keeping your account active and your connections established while not visiting for a week and half - sounds like he experienced exactly what one would expect.

Re:This is highly misleading.

[AmiMoJo]

Hay, we can still be friends... Often people want to stop using Facebook regularly but keep an account there so that they can deal with events that people put on there or view the odd family photo etc.

Re: This is highly misleading.

[Zero__Kelvin]

You have clearly never tried to delete an FB account recently. You can delete your account without waiting weeks and you absolutely *will* get hounded by them.

Re:This is highly misleading.

[jittles]

Choosing not to sign in to a platform you've been steadily using, where you are a member of active groups and have friends (that you follow) who post content ... and then getting updates from that platform telling you the sorts of things that are going on with your contacts/interests - that's NOT "trying to break up." Closing your account is "breaking up." Do that, and you'll stop hearing from FB in short order. Playing coy by keeping your account active and your connections established while not visiting for a week and half - sounds like he experienced exactly what one would expect.

That is not true. I deleted a facebook account that I used for some testing of the Facebook SDK with my work email address and continued to get a weekly email from Facebook asking me to restore my account every week for 3 years before I left that company. There's no such thing as deleting a Facebook account. They will let you restore it with all of its old posts at any time.

Re:This is highly misleading.

[ScentCone]

Often people want to stop using Facebook regularly but keep an account there so that they can deal with events that people put on there or view the odd family photo etc.

I agree. My point is that no signing into it for ten days (rather than actively deleting the account) isn't "trying to break up with Facebook." The headline, the summary, and even the whole point of the thing is kinda disingenuous that way.

Make THEM break up with you

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like in real life, i found this approach to be the the most efficient while being the safest.

With Facebook, the only account i had was already pretty weak: no phone number, no picture, no real name, no phone pairing (login exclusively from a sandboxed navigator)... so they only had my behavior: likes, comments, scrolling analysis... so when i wanted out i just poked some butthurt communities and eventually they reported my profile which resulted facebook requiring me to send them an ID to verify my account in order to be able to login again.
They haven't seen me again since. but the funny thing is that I'm still receiving emails from them every now and then notifying me with the usual dumb things that happens there : "John Shmoe has updated his status"

I'm close to dropping it

[rossz]

I made a FB account because my family was all on it and kept nagging me to join in. I finally relented. But politics are driving me off. I don't even like Trump, but the constant "Trump is hitler" posts are fucking nonstop and I'm getting sick and tired of seeing that shit every time I log in. What ever happened to talking about family stuff?

This evening I finally snapped and called my sister a "fucking idiot" after she posted yet another nazi reference.

Re:I'm close to dropping it

[johnsie]

To be fair he does use a lot of the same tactics that hitler used, minus the genocide of course.

Think that's bad?

[GerryGilmore]

Try cancelling DirecTV. I did, but - dang! - what an experience!
First, there is ZERO way to cancel online. You MUST call in to them.
Next, prepare yourself for a lengthy "we can drop your price!" pitches (which, TBH, if that's your game, consider it a freebie from me to you) all the way through - and I am not making this up! - "you're making me very sad by cancelling."
It ALMOST would have been easier just to cancel my credit card....

Re:Think that's bad?

[mea_culpa]

Most companies require you to talk to their 'accounts retention department' which is a pool of experienced salespeople. Vonage was worse in that they parked your call for at least an hour regardless of salesperson availability. They would then drop your call at least twice so you had to wait an hour each time.

Next time ask to speak with escalations dept. Tell them you are moving to Liberia to serve a 5 year humanitarian mission and need to cancel the service.

Re:Think that's bad?

[rworne]

You went about it the wrong way with Vonage. I had them for more than a decade because calls overseas are pretty cheap. I never had a problem with them, but the service steady increased in price over the years and I was getting annoyed with it. We have been using FaceTime for international calls for a few years now and I moved over to another VoIP company and all I pay them is about $4.70 in taxes for their free service.

What I did was port my number over. The second it completed, bye-bye Vonage. They didn't even send me an email about it, they just cancelled the auto-pay, my account vanished off their site, and we wound up essentially ghosting each other.

Re:Think that's bad?

[sjames]

Simple personal policy, give them a reasonable chance to cancel properly (1 hour on hold is not reasonable), then call credit card and block their charges.

Re:Think that's bad?

[Greyfox]

Oh, you know they'd submit your bill to collections if you canceled your credit card. Of course, that retention guy you're talking to gets flogged at the end of the day if he doesn't make his quota -- one of the benefits of outsourcing the phone people to third world countries, but that's not really your problem. If it makes you feel any better, the $1.50 a day they pay him allows him to live like a king there, at least when he's not getting flogged.

Re:Think that's bad?

[cmdr_klarg]

I did that several years (15?) ago after they decided to piss me off.

Got the monthly bill, and noticed that the amount had doubled; oops, looks like I either forgot to pay or perhaps the bill got lost in the mail. No problem; I put a check for the full amount in the envelope and sent it off.

A couple days later, I receive a call from DirecTV, threatening to disconnect my service if I didn't pay them RIGHT NOW, over the phone. I explain that the full amount is in the mail on it's way. Made no difference; pay now or be disconnected. Fine - I did the whole over the phone payment and made them happy.

I was a 9+ year subscriber, but after ONE missed payment I was treated like a fucking deadbeat. I called Dish the very next day, and scheduled the install. Once Dish was up and running I called in to Directv to cancel.

Yep, got the whole retention spiel but the lady on the phone didn't push very hard after I told her why I was cancelling. Made them mail me an actual check to reimburse for the over-the-phone payment bullshit. You want to retain a customer? Don't piss them off.

Re:Think that's bad?

[sjames]

That's one of the problems I have with credit reports. They're little more than unsubstantiated gossip.

It might be useful to have your CC company send you a letter stating why the future charges are blocked so you can dispute any claims against your credit report.

Even when THEY lock you out

[BeCre8iv]

After abreviating my name and being reported (probably by a user of a full pseudonym) FB demanded a scan of my passport or ID.
14 days afterwards, I waslocked out of my account.

I still however get notifications, birthdays etc in my spambin and cant make it stop without handing my papers to the
Internet gestapo.

While in hindsight they did me a favour bycutting me off before they could build an identifiable profile, FB and their parners can still just zuck themselves.

Re:Even when THEY lock you out

[antdude]

Ditto. I had the same issue since I didn't want to use my real name. :(

Re:Even when THEY lock you out

[bill_mcgonigle]

Send a letter to their legal department and give them e.g. 30 days to stop sending you email before filing a lawsuit.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

> TFA: The company has mistakenly released data of millions of its members and friends of members to third parties

LOL. I mistakenly do things for money too.

can't confirm

[timerider]

I can't really confirm that experience.

I deleted my account, and other than one confirmation email plus one with the link to the download of all the data FB had on me I didn't get any "urgings" to reconsider... and by now it's gone for good.

This is not how you break up

[Anonymous Coward]

Deleting your account is breaking up. Not logging in is ghosting.

SRSLY? Hotmail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all things? To... control Fakebook?

Head... explodes.

Been almost 10 years. Same experience

[Maxo-Texas]

I still get multiple posts per day from facebook which I send to my junk folder automatically.

Facebook is not your friend. You are the product. Facebook puts you at risk.

Click unsubscribe

[johnsie]

I clicked unsubscribe in the email and never heard anything again. There's no way I'm going to agree to their new 'privacy' policy. The last straw was them moving data out of Ireland to avoid having to comply with privacy legislation.

The /. title and write-up is plain wrong

[CptLoRes]

I dislike facebook with a passion, but this /. article is pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with the mentioned article. The article is about how irrelevant and unimportant Facebook notifications really are. Not once does he talk about wanting to limit or prevent messages from facebook, and not being able to do so.

Just check the Âdonâ(TM)t send me mail&#

[Ch_Omega]

To be fair, Facebook does give you the option to both deactivate or permanently delete your profile, and in both instances, you get the option to select the option to not recieve ANY e-mails from Facebook. I did that a good while ago, and havenâ(TM)t heard from Facebook since. Simply put, it is not Facebookâ(TM)s fault that this person did not bother to check what options is available in the settings menu, in order to Âbreak up with Facebook.

Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Slate

[recrudescence]

Alas, thanks to the GDPR, the fine article is hidden behind a website which demands I simply agree to "the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our site, in emails and across the Internet, to personalize content and perform site analytics" as a single, lumped action before I am allowed to read it. Therefore I was unable to read it.

I very much hope most users prompted with that warning also simply felt unable to read the content rather than compelled to agree to whatever it is Slate is trying to wave off under the umbrella of a single 'Agree' button.

Could have left off "if you try to break up"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Facebook will harass you mercilessly" is pretty much all that need be said.

But you do have to wonder what kind of candy ass calls 17 emails in 9 days "merciless". "OMFG! Facebook sent me an email once every 12.7 hours!!!! THE HORROR!!!"

Re:Could have left off "if you try to break up"

[Ol Olsoc]

"Facebook will harass you mercilessly" is pretty much all that need be said.

But you do have to wonder what kind of candy ass calls 17 emails in 9 days "merciless". "OMFG! Facebook sent me an email once every 12.7 hours!!!! THE HORROR!!!"

I have some users of email lists I administer that get pissed off if they get an email that doesn't interest them. Its like they want to be a member of the "club", but don't want to get any club news.

Its mostly older guys. I've taken to just shadow unsubbing them when I get complaints. It seems t make them happy.

There's a simple fix for this you know...

[The Cynical Critic]

Seriously, how is this news to anyone?

Because not only have we had multiple stories about the way facebook works when you stop logging in daily over the years, I've personally seen the way it works when I joined back in 2010. Decided it wasn't worth the constant notifications on mobile so I kept it browser-only and would only log in about 1-3 times week and good grief did they spam your email with notifications if you went more than 3 days without logging in.

However it turns out there's a very simple fix for that. Just go into your account settings, then the notification settings and under email chose the minimal notifications option where they just send you account, security and privacy related notifications. Think I can count the emails I've gotten over the years since then on the fingers of one hand.

Re:Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Sl

[4im]

Then Slate does not conform to the GDPR, and are exposing themselves to being sued by european users. Acceptance for different kinds of use of data *must* be separate, and service *may not be denied* when only the minimum required for delivery of service is accepted (e.g. the online shop 3suisses using your address for delivering goods to you and invoicing you, but denied from selling your data to 3rd parties, where they used to make most of their money).

Oh well, Slate has a lot of company that way, few have bothered to implement GDPR properly so far. Of course, they'll cry a river when the fines start coming...

On the + side: the data they are not allowed to collect can't be leaked. Or it'll seriously bite them if they collect them anyway, and they get loose.

Solution

[registrations_suck]

The solution to stuff like this is:

1). Get your own domain name and run e-mail off it.

2). Use a different email address for every bullshit service you sign up for...such as facebook@yourdomain.com, twitter@yourdomain.com, etc.

3). Forward all such addresses to your REAL e-mail address - the one you check.

4). When you break up with the bullshit service you signed up for, simply stop forwarding the email.

There are other benefits to this approach as well. I'll let you decide what they are.

Deleted my account months ago

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

And never received a single message from them, then or since.

This is why you use a spam email account

[gatkinso]

Then you simply delete your account, done.

Re:So move your email to a throwaway account

[gatkinso]

Yeah, the previous email address is still in their database.

Should have used the throwaway or spam account when signing up in the first place.

Re:Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Sl

[johnsie]

Ublock says this page connections to 13 different domains behind the scenes. Not cool.

breakup analogy solves the data retention problem

[goombah99]

We should seize on this analogy. The problem isnt that facebook has your data, it is that you don't have anything that belongs to facebook to trade back for it. When you breakup IRL you also have to return each other's shit stored at your respective apartments. Meet in the ihop parking lot and move her hairbrush, potpouri, photos of her, and Duran Duran CDs to her trunk, and take back your shirts, varsity jacket, and your dog's extra bowl/mat/food. But she conveniently forgets to return your Starbucks coffee mugs. That's like Facebook hanging onto some of your data but at least you get most of it away from her.

IDK

[ruddk]

Facebook and Twitter both liked to "ping" me if I haven't visited them in the last 24 hours.
However, once I confirmed that I wanted my account to be deleted, it was the last I heard from them.

Re:Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Sl

[Ol Olsoc]

Oh well, Slate has a lot of company that way, few have bothered to implement GDPR properly so far. Of course, they'll cry a river when the fines start coming...

Or just GeoBlock y'all.

Apparently checkboxes are too hard...

[FatRatBastard]

... because when you disable your account there's one that allows you to allow Facebook to continue to contact you. As long as you choose to not allow that they'll never email you. Nary an email from them since I killed my account. Facebook is a mountain of suck, but so is this story.

Re:Statistics Failure

[butzwonker]

That's the anchoring effect that is modelled by Tversky & Kahneman's award-winning prospect theory.

Weird

[DontBeAMoran]

I had never seen any "join Facebook" ads before.

But since the last two days, I've seen probably a dozen "Join Facebook today!" ads, including on top of YouTube videos (little banners that pop above the video controls, that you need to close manually - PITA).

The Jealous Ex

[WankerWeasel]

Spent a couple weeks in a 3rd world country with no reliable access last year. During that time I didn't use Facebook and continued to avoid it for months after returning. Always told friends that Facebook became the jealous ex. "What are you doing?" "We miss you!" "Your friend did something, you should really log on and see what it was." "There's this thing you'd like if you would just come back." "Is it something I did?" Constant emails and pushed notifications.

Not how you break up with someone.

[Anonymous Coward]

"He stopped logging in on June 6 and stayed off Facebook for ten days"

If my wife suddenly didn't come home, I'd call the police in the morning.

If you want to break up with someone YOU FUCKING TELL THEM, or in the case of facebook: DELETE YOUR FUCKING ACCOUNT.

eh, whatever

[arkane1234]

Eh, whatever. I use facebook to talk to friends around the country and share daily stuff, and people who own fieros as well. (for info sharing, parts sale/trade/etc)

There was a time I was away for 1-2 years, got emails like explained and just sent the first one or two to the spam folder. After that, no more issues.
This wasn't the first website I've had this issue with... are people new?

Re:Seriously, Slashdot

[arkane1234]

I so agree... you'd think everyone started using websites when facebook came out or something.... yeesh.
Next thing will be stories about someone complaining about instructions saying to ctrl-click instead of right-click...

Extreme Exageration

[eepok]

17 automated form emails over nine days does not amount to merciless harassment. It's not even an annoyance or inconvenience if you just mark it as SPAM.

This is a non-issue jumping on a bandwagon.

Facebook ...

[PPH]

... boiled my pet rabbit.

Re:Facebook ...

[Locke2005]

You, kind sir, win the internet for today! Unfortunately, I have no mod points right now...

Twitter, LinkedIn, Comcast - they all do it

[ripvlan]

I don't use twitter often, nor linkedIn. After an extended away, the App on my phone started to show notifications from Twitter - and upon logging in there were no DMs or messages, just "missed tweets". Similar experience with LinkedIn. The notification was because twitter hadn't seen in awhile. The emails from both began too. Please login, we missed you. One of them even assumed I had forgotten my password.

When I unplugged my cable box because I don't use it Comcast noticed. I figured I'd save the power bill (dang thing gets warm). Comcast sent me a Letter in the mail with instructions on how to turn it back on. They assumed I was confused and wasn't using it, maybe even afraid to call for help. It is a nice gesture if I was 80 years old and couldn't figure out technology. But they too missed me. They wanted me to know about all of the Terrific Programming that I was missing.

It's all about engagement. Part of it is getting customers back, part is assuming there's a problem.

Re:Twitter, LinkedIn, Comcast - they all do it

[Trax3001BBS]

I don't use twitter often, nor linkedIn. After an extended away, the App on my phone started to show notifications from Twitter - and upon logging in there were no DMs or messages, just "missed tweets".

I get at least 10 Twitter E-mails a week; and have only logged in to get an account I've never used, 8 years ago.

Re:Twitter, LinkedIn, Comcast - they all do it

[knorthern knight]

> When I unplugged my cable box because I don't use it Comcast noticed. I figured
> I'd save the power bill (dang thing gets warm). Comcast sent me a Letter in the
> mail with instructions on how to turn it back on. They assumed I was confused and
> wasn't using it, maybe even afraid to call for help. It is a nice gesture if I was
> 80 years old and couldn't figure out technology. But they too missed me. They
> wanted me to know about all of the Terrific Programming that I was missing.

They were actually more concerned about the fact that you weren't watching the extra commercials that they insert into the cable TV stream (Yes!!!). See this thread on DSLReports http://www.dslreports.com/foru... Fewer people watching their inserted ads means less extra revenue for them.

Re:breakup analogy solves the data retention probl

[datavirtue]

Wow. You really triggered on that one.

It *CAN*" be a waste of time?

[damn_registrars]

What else can it be?

Block f*c*book email at the door

[IGnatius T Foobar]

It should be obvious that everyone should configure their email systems to block all email from all f*c*book domains. (On my network the entire service is blocked, but sometimes you have a f*c*book user in the household)

oops

[Thud457]

So you're saying 2016 was all due to people making racist posts in an desperate attempt to get their Facebook accounts deleted?

Delete it

[Ryanrule]

I nuked my account. Haven’t heard boo.

Re:Delete it

[Locke2005]

Worked for me too... except now i can't see any new pictures of the girl I liked in high school (40 years ago). Darn...

Not just Facebook

[Locke2005]

Instagram sent me a "It looks like you're having trouble logging in" email today for an account I haven't touched in years...

Re:breakup analogy solves the data retention probl

[DCFusor]

Because she *sold* those coffee mugs. Better analogy.

10 days? NOT EVEN newsworthy...

[Zontar The Mindless]

I haven't logged in to FB in FIVE YEARS and I am still getting 10-20 mails a day from them.

Even when *Facebook* breaks up...

[lucia-om]

...they still mercilessly email you. When I got locked out of my account and told that my legal ID was required for account access, I didn't comply, though I did respond in hopes of getting my account back. This has been several years now, and I've not been able to stop the notifications. I still have no access. I created a filter in webmail so that their mail goes straight to a folder called Facebook Spam, and I don't have to see it in Thunderbird.