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How to permanently delete a Facebook account

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Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#51

Post by brudgers »

Saved to favorites - Right next to Lucy's Instructions for kicking a football.

So I visited my Linkedin profile earlier this week. They had automagically added a long disconnected telephone number to my profile - as in disconnected for over five years. I suspect it came either from extended internet data mining or more likely an obsolete contact in some acquaintance's uploaded address book.

A Facebook profile is mostly a Collection of Pointers. Deleting the pointer doesn't delete the values at the other end. Until garbage collection, they will persist. In other words, unless my friends and family and groups to whom I have sent information delete their accounts, data about me will persist.

Accounts are not zombies. They are vampires, never having died in the first place.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#52

Post by jonknee »

mjolk wrote: post #38
martinml wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems so: https://plus.google.com/u/0/downgrade/

IIRC, this removes the ability to use hangouts as well.

> You’ll need a full Google+ account to get access to all of Hangouts’ features including group video calls, sharing photos, and using Hangouts with Google+ circles.

https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/2944865?hl=en&ref...

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#53

Post by zalew »

paulannesley wrote: post #10

Worth adding, because it's not mentioned on the linked page: When I deleted my account in 2010, there was a one month cooling off period, during which any sign-in would cancel the deletion request. Perhaps that's sensible to catch malicious/accidental deletions, but I imagine it also makes it hard for Facebook addicts to leave.

> Perhaps that's sensible to catch malicious/accidental deletions, but I imagine it also makes it hard for Facebook addicts to leave.

Especially when during those few weeks you get constantly bothered by emails like 'your friends are missing you', 'look what they posted this week', etc. and when you click on anything - bam, you're logged back.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#54

Post by a3_nm »

Peroni wrote: post #6
codesuela wrote: post #2

pretty sure this is not a real full delete. Probably just switches around the profile_status field: 0 - visible/default/active 1 - deactivated 2 - it is gone, really! I swear! crosses fingers 3 - suspended for tos abuse (we don't like you but your data might be valuable at some point) edit: also to be fair: 4 - memorial mode

Coincidentally, Adam Hupp from FB spoke at HN London last night and he made a comment that when you permanently delete your facebook account, they do actually wipe all the data stored on you. In Europe at least, there are significant due diligence processes that they are legally required to follow in this regard.

Hum -- so assuming Facebook is making offline backup copies (which they should), are they really going to retreive their offline backups and remove your info if you want to delete your Facebook account?

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#55

Post by ghaff »

300bps wrote: post #37
skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

I agree with your general point but your example is not correct The Internet Archive makes it very easy to remove content from their site. I had a family web site accessible to the public for 12 years with about 25,000 pictures on it. For various reasons I took the site down but archive.org still showed the pictures. A quick change to robots.txt stopped that though. Basically, even if the archive grabbed the files at…

It's also IMO a reasonable question what the "right" behavior should be in such a situation. I'm tempted to make the argument that once content has been made available to the world and archived by the Internet Archive, my descendants or a new corporate owner shouldn't necessarily have the right to remove that content from public view at some time in the future.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#56

Post by lawdawg »

ajanuary wrote: post #32
martinml wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird. I got asked _once_ if I wanted to migrate my YouTube account to G+, I said no, and never got asked again.

I've seen stories both from people who continually got pestered (like myself) and from people who didn't (such as yourself). I dunno why though.

are you actually hitting the "No" button, and providing a reason, or are you just closing the dialog?

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#57

Post by hnha »

rwmj wrote: post #42
300bps wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your general point but your example is not correct The Internet Archive makes it very easy to remove content from their site. I had a family web site accessible to the public for 12 years with about 25,000 pictures on it. For various reasons I took the site down but archive.org still showed the pictures. A quick change to robots.txt stopped that though. Basically, even if the archive grabbed the files at…

Make sure you maintain control over the domain and always have a robots.txt file present, because if you ever lose that, those files will become visible again. Good luck arranging for your descendents to do this after you die.

just mail them, they are nice people.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#58

Post by officemonkey »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #49
officemonkey wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I used Linkedin for. Don't use the service, but it's a handy way to keep up with my extended business network.

Isn't that one of the main features of LinkedIn? Maybe I'm misunderstanding but aren't you essentially saying the equivalent of "I don't use Google's services but it's a handy way to help me find websites"?

Somebody "friends" me on LinkedIn, I accept. If I need to contact that person and I don't have their email, I go into LinkedIn and send them a message.

So it's essentially a backup in case my address book fails. I'll pop in there maybe a dozen times a year. That's not exactly using their service.

Re: How to permanently delete a Facebook account

#59

Post by zwily »

kryten wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #7

To all the skeptics in threads like these: asking that Facebook actually, entirely, erase all your data isn't a reasonable demand. Unless, if course, you're also OK with Facebook's walled-garden, Facebook-is-the-Internet, Compuserve-wasn't-so-bad strategy. Anyone who ever tried to delete content from the internet knows this: The Internet Archive has long since made a copy of what you're trying to delete. Anything you…

It's perfectly possible and reasonable to delete all of your data. It's just hard. We have to do this with our clients if they shift off our platform and believe me, it's not much fun deleting 20-100Gb datasets from a shared database with over 2000 tables in it on production kit. But we do it, because we are honest. Facebook are dishonest. Simple as.

Do you also delete their data from all your database backups?
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