Just Delete Me • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Delete Me

#71

Post by michaelt » Sun, Aug 25, 2013, 12:00 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #66

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #61

Quora gives me a link to "deactivate" my account but wants me to write a mail to privacy@quora.com for "deleting" my account. Others have reported that the requests sent to this email address are not fulfilled, neither are the mails even replied to. I want to know the names of assholes in charge of this company so that I can avoid ever working with them.

I got my account deleted just fine by emailing them. Have you tried?

I e-mailed them, then waited a few months, then e-mailed them again, then went through the site manually blanking my answers then deleting them (surprise, the 'delete' button just hides your answer), and only then did I get an e-mail back saying my account had been deleted.

I agree with nileshtrivedi these Quora guys seem like assholes - that's why I decided to delete my account in the first place.

Re: Just Delete Me

#72

Post by skue » Sun, Aug 25, 2013, 1:28 PM UTC

dictum wrote: post #60

>Skype: Contact customer services. You’ll need to know 5 contacts from your contacts list, the month you created your account, and your signup email address. Why do I get the feeling asking Skype to cancel your account immediately puts you into a special watchlist?

I canceled my account a week ago, and it wasn't nearly that simple. They paid an agent almost an hour's wage to make it as difficult as possible to delete my account.

The agent kept asking me for personal data such as my birthdate and half the digits of my credit card number. I refused repeatedly (I never recall giving Skype my birthdate in the first place).

Eventually after 55 minutes of discussion, the agent agreed to delete my account if I could provide them 5 of my contacts, the amount of my last bill, and my contact email. Even though you have to be logged in to speak to an agent, and all of these things are fully visible on their website once you are logged in.

Re: Just Delete Me

#73

Post by miguelrochefort » Mon, Aug 26, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

Argorak wrote: post #57

miguelrochefort wrote: post #36

Why do people expect data about themselves to magically disappear from the Internet? One should always assume that everything you communicate online (explicitly or not) has the potential to exist forever.

Because we are talking about proper legal entities here. If I want my data deleted, they should have the means an the will to do so. Nothing "magical" at all. It is not as if I am asking "the internet" to delete my stuff, but "facebook", "google" or "okcupid".

If they agreed that they would delete everything they know about you at your request, sure. But most of them don't, which means you can't do anything.

Companies should not be forced to implement ways to delete data about users. That's just silly.

Why do you want them to delete the data anyway? To me, it sounds silly and looks like some kind of censorship. Embrace transparency and live with the fact that what is public remains public.

Re: Just Delete Me

#74

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 27, 2013, 1:34 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #67

dredmorbius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the negative consequences (DoS) of an unauthorized account deactivation, this is actually a fairly reasonable protocol. The challenge of electronic services is in identifying your customers. Especially when you're doing something allegedly on their behalf. Double-especially when that has permanent state/data loss consequences.

Who the hell knows which month they signed up? I signed up over 6 years ago. I think it is unfair to expect people to save their original email confirmation mail for upwards to 10 years (skype was released in 2003), especially given that nowhere in the mail it says that this is really important to keep.

I can top that.

A good friend's AOL email account was compromised. They'd been AOL customers (paid) for years, though when the email service went free, they discontinued payment and got broadband service from another provider.

AOL insisted that they give the credit card number that had been associated with the account. A card which hadn't been used and hadn't existed for years. Needless to say, it wasn't available.

For all I know, that email account is still active and valid, though hopefully no critical information is being sent to it.

Again: figuring out how to identify your true customer (or user) is hard.