Facebook offs social suicide service
Facebook is blocking IP addresses relating to companies which offer a social network deletion service. Once you give the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine your log-in details for social networking services, it automates the rigamarole of unfriending people and leaving groups. It then changes your passwords on the social networking so you …
You keep reporting that you can only de-activate, but you can delete. Simply go here https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account and follow it through. Then, if you stay out of your facebook account for 14 days it is permanently deleted. If you log in within the 14 day period, the account is re-activated. Those who really want out, stay out, it's not rocket science! :)
...deactivated my Facebook profile about 3 weeks ago and frankly I don't miss it at all (okay, I miss the Bejeweled Blitz 1 minute thingy, but thats it!). If its not attention seekers making ambiguous status updates just so they get "Ooh, wots the matter" or "R U OK?" or "Chin up hun" as a reply, its people making inappropriate comments to your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/husband/wife etc. Unwanted people you either went to school or worked with (and/or slept with) are a pain in the ass too... If I really wanted to keep in touch with you I would have done by other means, otherwise it means you either bored the shit out of me or I don't care about you enough to want to bother to even know you still exist!
If you're friends with unwanted people, that's your problem, nobody's forcing you. Just unfriend (ugh, I can't believe I just used that word) them. If your friends are posting inane attention-seeking updates or hitting on your partner, that says more about your friends than it does about the site.
Facebook is a handy little way of keeping in touch with people you like but don't see on a regular basis. If you're finding it annoying, you're doing it wrong.
"To be fair of course, given Google and other caches, there is a danger that anything you put online will never truly die."
Except if your account is set to be viewable only by your friends (the sensible option, which used to be the default until the recent changes) in which case Google can't even see your data, let alone cache it.
Come on Reg, this is sloppy - facebook DOES allow account deletion, and has allowed it for a long time- without having to delete all your connections first. Simply visit http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account and you're set. Fully-fledged deletion.
Next time have a quick google first eh?
They do not want you to delete the friends, because I bet they still store that info when they delete the account.
If you want to leave any of these kind of online services and websites the worse thing you can do is simply 'delete' it.
What you do is munge it first. Change you details to nonsense. Put garbage in as many editable boxes as possible. Change as much as possible to random details that mean nothing.
Then leave it a couple of weeks, so that it has time to disperse and filter through whatever backups are happening on site or get picked up by whatever search engines are crawling it.
Then, you delete it. That way, if anything is actually getting kept "for your future convenience" it'll be garbage that doesn't matter.
So, when is your tin foil hat measurment and fitting appointment date?
Simply solution: client software.
This could be as simply as a sand-boxed browser plugin that connects to Facebook for your and passes through communication between Facebook and DeFacebook or whatever it's called.
...does 'delete' mean in a Facebook world? sorry if this sounds stupid, but i would've thought they'd have kept your data for months after your profile 'deletion'..but what do i know; i'm just a hobo who has no idea what Facebooks are anyways.
Presumably the next step is for these companies to enable either a downloadable app or an activeX control etc to do all these delete steps but from your IP address instead.
In a few years time I'm going to make myself a tshirt that says "I NEVER MADE A FACEBOOK NOT EVEN A MOCK ONE"
"Web 2.0 Suicide Machine joined the group Anonymous Proxy FTW Fuck You Facebook"
Oh wait, I'm not getting any updates after all, what with my refusal to become one of Zuckerberg's zombies. Ho hum.
This would be the same facebook that asks you to put in your email address and password so that it can email everyone in your address book?
before you request that your account is deleted, first pollute it, lots, replace all your pictures with new random pictures from google, then remove and replace everything else, then defriend everyone, or use this service.
if you want to be sure all of those pictures are gone, pollution sounds a good way to start the ball rolling!
I 'deleted' an account just before a previous round of privacy rules came into effect. Left it for a few months before trying again with some bogus details and a minimal friend list. Funnily enough Facebook kept suggesting 'people you might know...' that were on my previous account, despite them having no connection to the people I had added the second time around. The only thing I could see to link them was me stupidly using the same email address.
"It is not actually possible to completely delete a Facebook profile once it has been set up."
False or, more charitably, no longer true.
Admittedly anybody relying on Facebook themselves to find that out would have a very hard time indeed. I'd expect El Reg to at least try to be part of the solution.
... I don't see a button in the control panel on here offering to *delete or even *deactivate my el-reg account easily... ;)
* notes that you'd probably be kind enough to do such a thing via an email request
The best way to ensure you have no personal info on Facebook is to NOT join up in the first place.
No, not even a bogus account.
I'm happy to be a Facebook virgin!
In keeping an account open so that you know what people say about you on Facebook (if anything) I only ever log into mine when I get an email notification that someone has contacted me, and given that I never bother contacting anyone else first, it doesn't happen often.
But Facebook does now store many photos of me, which realistically are always going to be there whether I use the site or not. So I'd rather have access to them, should I need it, than have to go through other channels
"send me the photos"
- "no, just look at them on facefail"
or "okay but I'm going to n00b them to you at 2KB/s over msn"
not worth the hassle.
I've bumped into a few people I know on there who I've lost contact with (I'm terrible at staying in contact).
In saying that, all the friends I have on there are people I've physically met. Unlike many of the people on there that think they are popular for having a 100+ friend count of people they don't know.
I have to say that I've been a facebook user for quite some time now. It's been an excellent way for me to contact old friends who've been out of touch with me for years for a wide variety of reasons, and also serves as a great repository for pictures and I do enjoy the comments my friends tag onto them. Granted, there IS a lot of dross on facebook and initially I did get spammed with all sorts of requests for particpation in games, groups or so-called sources, so for all you haters (who've never actually tried facebook, I note) here are some top tips:
* If you don't think someone is really a friend, don't add them.
* if you don't like app invites, block the app.
* if you don't want to play a game, join a group or a cause, then don't.
* if you hate pictures of yourselves, don't post them.
* if you don't like the comments that someone makes on your page, block the person.
It's really no rocket science and I must say I am dissapointed by this rejection of emerging software technology by people who read the progressive technology press!
Oh, and Twitter sucks!
Well, not exactly. Like Wize, I have come across a few old friends via MySpace. I don't log in very often, and amusingly my MySpace profile has zero references to my website. :-)
It was chosen on the basis of two things. Firstly, back when I signed up, MySpace actually let strangers view your profile in most cases. Facebook, on the other hand, presented you with a login/register prompt. I did not wish to sign up to anything until I knew the person I found was actually the person I was looking for. FFS, Google could read more than me - the link information seemed to have part of the profile but all I got was a prompt. So I went with MySpace. It might seem to be the less privacy-oriented, but on the other hand it only stores and displays what you tell it...
And the second reason? I'm sorry. I know the origins, but whatever - "Facebook" is a REALLY daft name.
I've not checked out the account deletion options with MySpace. To be honest I'm not overly bothered. I'm more likely just to let it "lapse", but I don't because it is also a useful contact address to give to people who I would like to think of me as being in some way "normal". My personal site is geek-central. :-)
Oh, and yes, I got invitations from bands I'd never heard of, but there's an option to turn this off.
I also got "invitations" from girls I'd never heard of, but there's a delete button.
My *only* complaint about MySpace is I got a random message from an interesting sounding Chinese girl. I went to write back and was told that - basically - MySpace.com and MySpace.cn don't talk to each other any more. Or more likely some political bollocks is stopping it. So I "friended" the girl and left a hello comment via a proxy (just in case). I am listed as a friend so I guess she accepted. Still can't mail her but at least I could raise the middle finger just a little bit...
Oh, and that bit about the demise of MySpace and all the adverts? In France MySpace is third (it's in today's Ouest-France, Facebook is #1), and they're all steadily (slowly) increasing in popularity. Up is better than down. As for the adverts, I have ABP so... what adverts? :-)
Badgers 'cos that what makes MySpace and Facebook run. Lots of badgers on a really big traction wheel. Kinda like the one at Singleton...
