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152 Comments
- mattsilv, on 10/19/2007, -8/+191I have a new guide for Steven: 2504 steps to choosing a reliable web host
- Yeabudy, on 10/10/2007, -3/+117I have a question regarding photo storage. For example, if you upload photos to a Facebook photo album, and then remove said photos, the photos stay on the facebook servers. Try it yourself: Right click a photo while viewing it and copy the image location.
It will appear like this: http://photos-892.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-sctm/v103/228/94/12901892/n12901892_34354363_3153.jpg
After deleting the photo, the link above will still work to view the picture. I have never tested how long the link works and if the picture actually gets deleted. After removing all of your content and then 'deleting' the account completely, will all of these stored photos associated with the account be deleted? Methinks not, but I would like to see it requested and see if anything actually happens. - jer2eydevil88, on 10/10/2007, -11/+1142504 Steps to closing your Facebook account.
Posted on Mon, 2007-07-23 23:42.
Yes, it's true! I finally managed to close my Facebook account. It was a long, arduous road - the hardest part was slaying the Gorgon on level 16 - and I'm glad it's finally over.
If you, cherished reader, are wondering why I would do such a thing, then wipe those potato skins off the top of your Bananarama tour t-shirt and keep reading:
I already left Flickr, Myspace, Youtube, and most of the other similar web services because they want to eat our babies. The process was fairly straightforward for each of those (Though Flickr ends it with a pretentious *****-off: "Thanks for using Flickr. See ya!" Whatever. Goddamn wankers).
Facebook, however, was a much more interesting endeavour. You see, you can't really close your Facebook account once you open it; you can only deactivate it, which I somehow missed when reading their 913 page privacy policy:
Changing or Removing Information
Access and control over most personal information on Facebook is readily available through the profile editing tools. Facebook users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account [though we don't provide any means to delete more than one item at a time, which is about as enjoyable as having your nose picked by Andre the Giant]. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time [Eternity is reasonable!] but will not be generally available to members of Facebook and by 'generally', we mean sometimes, and by 'members of Facebook', we don't mean our corporate and government buddies named Clives or Dustin who come golfing with us on the second tuesday of every month, after the Freemason meeting].
Emphasis mine.
When I first wanted to leave Facebroke after seeing an ex-flame post ridiculous badly photoshopped pics of her in a bikini , I must've missed the subtle distinction between 'DEACTIVATE' and 'CLOSE MY ***** ACCOUNT YOU GODDAMN CAPUCHINS'.
Maybe it was a gremlin in the system, but I kept receiving emails from Facebook - I couldn't find out how to leave their subscription list. I kept digging until I tried logging in again with my 'deactivated' account. To my surprise, they sent me an email telling me how to 'reactivate' my account - meaning that Facebook still kept a copy of all of my personal data, indefinitely. No offense, guys, but what the *****?
It's one thing when I choose to leave a web service (Flickr, Youtube) because I don't want them profiting from my content. It's another when they prevent me from leaving. Is this really the only choice we have left? ***** web companies vs. ***** web companies that keep and distribute your personal data ad infinum even when you request your account to be closed?
As it turns out, I had to 'contact' facebook and ask them how to delete my account, only to find out that I have to manually delete every single minifeed item, friend, post, wall writing, etc by hand, one-by-one, or else they will refuse to close your account. When you're a member of the Internet High Society as I am, you find that you have thousands of these items to delete.
Here's the complete transcript of the conversation I had with "Lucy From Facebook". You'll find me tedious, boring, petty, and acting like the douchebaggiest dick you'll ever know. In other words, it's just like meeting me in person.
Hello,
I've recently "deactivated" my Facebook account, but cannot find a way
to completely delete my account.
I would like all of my information to be wiped from the facebook
servers.
Please delete my account en related information in its entirety (my
account email address is steven [at] stevenmansour.com), or send me
instructions on how to do so myself.
Thank you for your time,
s.
Hi Steven,
If you deactivate, your account is removed from the site.
However, we save all your profile content (friends, photos,
interests, etc.), so if you want to reactivate sometime, your
account will look just the way it did when you deactivated. If you
do want your information completely wiped from our servers, we
can do this for you. However, you need to remove all profile
content before we can do this. Once you have cleared your
account, let us know and we'll take care of the rest.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Lucy
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
Hi Lucy,
I've removed all profile content from my account as per your request.
Now, please go ahead and completely delete my account
(steven [at] stevenmansour.com).
The procedure to close an account on Facebook is needlessly convoluted
and unclear. To bring itself inline with privacy policies dictating good
behaviour on the web (see http://www.privacyinternational.org/ ), it
would be a good idea for Facebook to give users a one-step option to
close / delete their account instead of just 'deactivating' it, which is
misleading (if not blatantly dishonest) to users.
Please let me know when my account has been completely destroyed.
Thank you,
Steven Mansour
Hi Steven,
I apologize, but you have not completely deleted all of your
information. You still have incoming and outgoing messages,
wall posts, mini-feed stories, friends, and contact information
remaining on your profile. Once you have completely removed
all information from your account, I will permanently delete it for
you.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Lucy
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
I'm sorry, but it is unreasonable to expect users to manually delete,
one-by-one, each and every bit of information / friends / "notes" / wall
writings that they've posted or that other users have posted on their
accounts. It would take me hours to delete each wall post and feed
story.
It would be far easier for you to simply delete my account - and asking
me to manually erase each entry is unnecessary.
At this point, you have two choices:
- You can stop giving me the run-around, and just delete my account so
that everyone will be happy, or
- You can refuse to comply with your own privacy policy and user
standards, in which case I will be forced to escalate this situation.
Please advise,
Steven Mansour
Hi Steven,
I apologize for any inconvenience, however this is our privacy
policy for permanently deleting accounts. I am unable to delete
your account unless you have personally removed all of your
information. You may either completely clear your account so
that I can finish this process for you, or you can leave your
account deactivated. Let me know if you have further questions.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Lucy
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
Lucy from Facebook,
I've removed all my private data.
Close my account.
s.
Hi Steven,
We have processed your request. Let me know if you have any
further issues.
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Lucy
Customer Support Representative
Facebook
Now, most people won't get why this is such a big deal. But it is a big deal. Your personal data, especially on the web, is something that will be increasingly valuable to corporate and government interests - and increasingly important (and, perhaps, difficult) to protect.
I'm reminded of being at the SaveTheInternet.Com party in Memphis (Christ, what the ***** is a "YouTuber"?) where everyone was giving each other handjobs over how they spread the message about Net Neutrality and beat the telecoms with the help of Google and Yahoo. They didn't realize that they helped win the battle, but in doing so, they lost the war. They turned a blind eye to their supposed allies and failed to apply the same yardstick to measure privacy neutrality as they did to network neutrality. Google is ranked as one of the worst privacy firms on the net.
I don't know about you, but I like the idea of being in charge of my own private data, and controlling access to it accordingly. There will be lots of interesting battles fought over this in the next few years, so whatever you do, make sure you think long and hard about just how open you want to be with you own privacy - and whether others will treat it - thedarkrabbit, on 10/10/2007, -8/+81Nevermind... it wasn't that funny of a comment anyway...
- xOKxWhy, on 10/10/2007, -25/+84I can help you in one easy step
1. Don't sign up - dualaudi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+59The easiest way - upload inappropriate images... GOATSE'D they won't hesitate to delete your account...- images might always be on their servers... but account will be gone.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+50Probably not, unless somehow my browser pre-cached his image too...
- mos6507, on 10/10/2007, -1/+44This is common. Usually sites like this use a 3rd party image caching system. In this case it looks like limelight (see LL in the domain). These caching solutions usually have no way or a very convoluted way of purging files so you just don't link to it anymore and hope that nobody else is deep-linking (security via obscurity).
- mrsb, on 10/10/2007, -7/+46Makes me glad that I didn't have time to do much with Facebook other than accept friend requests.
- maverick999, on 10/10/2007, -1/+32http://duggmirror.com/tech_news/2504_steps_to_closing_your_Facebook_account/
- coincounter, on 10/10/2007, -2/+31LMAO looks like Steven had his work cut out. Seriously though, this is shocking from such a big operator. They're being sued this week also...
- CaptainNem0, on 10/10/2007, -4/+32dugg for being a funny comment
- deadA1ias, on 10/10/2007, -3/+25Given the tone of the rest of the article, it sounds like he's just being satirical/flippant.
- IHaveIssues, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22Actually this is not as crazy as it sounds.
- Elranzer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19Those steps actually make it sound easy.
Want a challenge? Try getting Google to permanently delete your information... - chimaera2005, on 10/10/2007, -10/+28"When you're a member of the Internet High Society as I am..."
At least he acknowledges later he's a douchebag. - Midas7g, on 10/10/2007, -8/+25http://duggmirror.com//tech_news/2504_steps_to_closing_your_Facebook_account/plain.html
- Dustin00, on 10/19/2007, -0/+17Wouldn't it be easier to just grossly violate their TOS?
- Scyth3, on 10/10/2007, -2/+18That's ridiculous. I've developed social networks before, and clearing of data is never an issue. There are a few residual remainders, but nothing that gives any personal data. I think they built it up, to realize that then they needed to have users be able to remove their accounts. So, they were lazy and just decided to allow "deactivating" rather than creating a ton of queries to do the work for the user.
Facebook is shaky on certain grounds -- like data storage and permissions. - stevenmansour, on 10/19/2007, -2/+17Yes, that seems like a guide that I would need right about now... :(
- jay12645, on 10/19/2007, -0/+14in other words... myspace
- smackhero, on 10/10/2007, -5/+17aren't you clever.
- Modano, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Mmm, that's some good crazy.
- stevenmansour, on 10/19/2007, -3/+13Why thank you!
Regards from my ass. - BossX, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9I had to go through the same ***** ordeal... I literally went back and forth with them 15 times through email, speaking to a different rep each time it seemed. They really want to hang on to your data.
- birdadderley, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9"English motha fuc#@a.. do you speak it?!"
- Samuel L. Jackson - trancemin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+13Mirror?
- jlepp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Anyone else see the irony in the fact that they mirrored content from a guy who seems to be very much against others controlling his digits...
- stevenmansour, on 10/19/2007, -4/+11In what part of my replies to her do you feel I was being 'such a dick'? I simply went back and forth with her trying to figure out how to close the damn account, only to find that it was damn near impossible. I never offended her or insulted her - I did get frustrated, however, and since facebook is a big monolithic faceless company, she was the one whose job it is to deal with me.
- stevenmansour, on 10/19/2007, -0/+7That would be beautiful - if all of a sudden, hundreds of facebook users suddenly started posting spam and offensive material in a concerted effort.
- el_taco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6almost makes me want to sit in the basement with my tinfoil hat on.
- BlackMagic2, on 10/19/2007, -3/+9I've personally never seen somebody say "2504 steps to choosing a reliable web host" after a site about 2504 steps to do something went down, if you have, I'd sure like to see it, until then, ***** off *****.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Oh stop it. Delete my account means delete my account. Don't be an ignorant, obtuse ass.
- jay12645, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5In death a member of facebook has a name, his name was steven mansour.
- sonycam, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Isn't this why privacy laws were created? Shouldn't some organisation ***** facebook up in one way or another?
Good article but it seems like the author was trying to imitate thebestpageintheuniverse a bit too much. - mikebai1990, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Wow, you can copy+paste?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5that's funny because people are having their accounts permanently closed after getting three strikes for hitting the posting limits and they're desperate to have them back.
- futureb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5it's surprising that the journalism of "campusprogress.org" hasn't led to congressional hearings or something
/elitist sarcasm - Grimdotdotdot, on 10/19/2007, -7/+11The author makes some good points, but he sounds so far up his own arse (greetings from the UK!) he might well be a singularity.
- urby86, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Goatse, spam, fictitious character profiles...you have options. I made a profile for the Burger King and they deleted that ***** fast.
- smackhero, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4i don't put up anything online that i care if a stranger or friend finds, but i do keep separate social network profiles for fiends and employers/work. also, i recently had a friend/acquaintance put up an image with me tagged in it that i didn't want people to see (it was from a lingerie party, and i'd gotten in trouble with my ex about it) but all i could do was untag myself from the photo. i know that most of my friends who'll see the photo were at the party so it's not that big of a deal, but it's still annoying knowing that the photo is out in public like that.
as far as facebook keeping data on their servers that isn't publicly available--i don't really care. i've understood the implications of putting personal info on the web and use my best discretion when choosing to do so. - nodonoug, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4RTFA. the button is 'deactivate' not 'remove'...they store all of your data 'in case you decide to return later.'
- thespiff, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Seriously dude. Do you really think Facebook can be held liable if they were to accidentally lose your list of Favorite Bands?
- TheLD, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Data Protection laws good enough reason?
- unleashedlive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5He must be using an iPhone : |
- Sparkster185, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5It's really, really simple to find a mirror. Just replace "http://digg.com" with "http://duggmirror.com". It also lists the URLs for the Google/Coral caches.
- vdxc, on 09/29/2008, -1/+4How can something be Dead on Arrival already. Surely that means you have to have some how being here before and come back, in which case, quit winging.
- Caruthers, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3"my facebook is a one way street...to stalkertown."
or jail... - sekhui, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3or get the dugged extension for firefox.
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