Can I delete my Skype account? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#41

Post by buro9 » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 10:19 AM UTC

eik3_de wrote: post #39

buro9 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data? Do other users have the right to delete your data? Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation. Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it…

I agree that posts shouldn't be deleted. But should the user be able to anonymize his posts when he deletes his account? Such that the username 'JohnDoe' is replaced with 'DeletedUser20140405.42'. IMO that doesn't destroy the readability of the conversation.

That's where we're going with Microcosm.

Deleting a user will nuke the account itself, and assign all content owned by that account to an anonymous/deleted account.

The context is preserved and no-one else's data is affected, but we've removed all Googleable trace of the original account (the username and profile).

The only remaining issue is whether a person made posts containing personal information (defined as being the same as personal data according to EU Data Protection laws... name, phone number, email, etc). But for that we'll always honour take-down requests even when the information is orphaned from an ownership record.

PS: To the downvoters, I'd love to understand what part is objectionable.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#42

Post by cliveowen » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 10:46 AM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #37

cliveowen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe users should always be in control of their data (and since it's been produced by them, it their data). Also, if their software breaks after deleting an account the problem is entirely on their part.

> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data? Do other users have the right to delete your data? Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation. Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it…

Deleting a post doesn't mean the whole conversation should be deleted (reddit works this way), and the meaning of following posts can be extrapolated from the context.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#43

Post by cliveowen » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 10:53 AM UTC

e1ven wrote: post #36

cliveowen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe users should always be in control of their data (and since it's been produced by them, it their data). Also, if their software breaks after deleting an account the problem is entirely on their part.

This becomes difficult when you are dealing with distributed systems. Let's use email as an example - I can close my Gmail account, and Google can delete all of my data off of their systems. There is nothing that either Google or I can do, however, to ensure that everyone I ever sent an email to will delete those messages as well. The messages are now on their computers, out of my reach. This becomes more evident whe…

It's not an all-or-nothing scenario, you should let users delete everything they can and let the rest be.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#44

Post by gabemart » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 10:56 AM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #37

cliveowen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe users should always be in control of their data (and since it's been produced by them, it their data). Also, if their software breaks after deleting an account the problem is entirely on their part.

> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data? Do other users have the right to delete your data? Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation. Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it…

Reddit gives users near total control over their comments and submissions. Comments can be manually edited or deleted months or years after submission. Self-posts can also be edited at any time. Posted submissions can be deleted, which replaces the submitter's name with [deleted] and prevents the submission from showing up in any public list of posts (it will still show up at the submission permalink). The only concession is that posts edited at any time beyond a few minutes from their posting appear with an asterisk.

Deleting an account on Reddit doesn't delete every comment and submission, but it does replace the username on every comment and submission with [deleted]. This isn't perfect from the user's perspective, but it's a lot better than most forums. It anonymizes any post or submission that doesn't directly leak personally identifying information by itself, which for most users will a large majority or even 100% of submissions.

I think allowing users to delete accounts and have their usernames replaced with [deleted] on every comment and submission is a decent compromise between respecting privacy for the user and maintaining the integrity of discussion for the community. I would feel much more comfortable using HN if it had such a system, although my revealed preference is that I care more about posting to HN than I do about the ability to retroactive delete my data.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#45

Post by baby » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:20 AM UTC

eik3_de wrote: post #39

buro9 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data? Do other users have the right to delete your data? Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation. Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it…

I agree that posts shouldn't be deleted. But should the user be able to anonymize his posts when he deletes his account? Such that the username 'JohnDoe' is replaced with 'DeletedUser20140405.42'. IMO that doesn't destroy the readability of the conversation.

I see that sometimes in reddit, the pseudo says [deleted] but the text is still there. Sometimes the text is shown as [deleted] as well. I don't understand when and how the first occurrence happens.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#46

Post by buro9 » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:23 AM UTC

gabemart wrote: post #44

buro9 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data? Do other users have the right to delete your data? Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation. Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it…

Reddit gives users near total control over their comments and submissions. Comments can be manually edited or deleted months or years after submission. Self-posts can also be edited at any time. Posted submissions can be deleted, which replaces the submitter's name with [deleted] and prevents the submission from showing up in any public list of posts (it will still show up at the submission permalink). The only conce…

> Reddit gives users near total control over their comments and submissions. Comments can be manually edited or deleted months or years after submission. Self-posts can also be edited at any time. Posted submissions can be deleted, which replaces the submitter's name with [deleted] and prevents the submission from showing up in any public list of posts (it will still show up at the submission permalink). The only concession is that posts edited at any time beyond a few minutes from their posting appear with an asterisk.

Has reddit not had users who flounced and programmatically nuked every submission they've ever made?

Whilst this wouldn't affect Reddit as a whole, it could lay waste to a subreddit if the person was one of the top posters within a very small area.

This is largely why most forums operate a "edit within a reasonable time" policy. Though obviously there are benefits to being able to cache long-term too.

Can you imagine the impact on HN if patio11 went through a bout of depression and decided to nuke every comment he'd ever made? The impact to the collective work would be substantial.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#47

Post by icebraining » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:29 AM UTC

okasaki wrote: post #32

monsterix wrote: post #6

I recently deleted my Linkedin account. But their junk emails continue to dirty my email even now. Next in the line is Skype, and then probably Facebook. Thankfully, I never shared my genuine data with Facebook or opened an a/c on Instagram or Whatsapp ever so I'm good at a certain level when it comes to Facebook. In my opinion Twitter is the only option that is sane at the moment.

username+whatever@gmail.com is delivered to username@gmail.com, so if you add the service name when you sign up it's very easy to block unwanted traffic. It also tells you which service sold your email to spammers.

Unless the spammers simply run remove the extra part from the address. A better way is to get your own domain and use a different alias for each service.

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#48

Post by nolok » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:31 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #45

eik3_de wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that posts shouldn't be deleted. But should the user be able to anonymize his posts when he deletes his account? Such that the username 'JohnDoe' is replaced with 'DeletedUser20140405.42'. IMO that doesn't destroy the readability of the conversation.

I see that sometimes in reddit, the pseudo says [deleted] but the text is still there. Sometimes the text is shown as [deleted] as well. I don't understand when and how the first occurrence happens.

Account marked deleted but not the post means the user account has been deleted.

Both marked deleted means that specific post has been deleted (but not the user account).

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#49

Post by rmlewisuk » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:37 AM UTC

eik3_de wrote: post #26

granttimmerman wrote: post #22

This is extremely relevant: http://justdelete.me/

It's a great service, I just added Lobsters. Adding a service takes 2 minutes, using the online editor from github that automatically creates a pull request etc. Edit: and already merged & deployed less than an hour later. Contributing is fun :)

You caught me on a good day for merging pull requests ;) thanks for the contribution, always appreciated :)

Re: Can I delete my Skype account?

#50

Post by HNaTTY » Sat, Apr 05, 2014, 11:59 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #47

okasaki wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

username+whatever@gmail.com is delivered to username@gmail.com, so if you add the service name when you sign up it's very easy to block unwanted traffic. It also tells you which service sold your email to spammers.

Unless the spammers simply run remove the extra part from the address. A better way is to get your own domain and use a different alias for each service.

I use a subdomain and forward *@subdomain.domain.com -- if you put a catchall on the root you will get spam.