Last Tribute to Facebook

I recently completed the lengthy process of removing a Facebook account. If you are reading this and think:

“Why on earth would you delete a Facebook account?!?! ITS THE BESTEST THING EVER!

You have some catching up to do, the rest of you skip down:

1. SOPHOS Facebook Study – good facts, interesting experiment
2. Facebook Privacy Policy – I don’t suggest reading the whole thing, its quite lame.
3. Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck – You remember people freaking out when the News Feeds came in?
4. Facebook: Threats to Privacy – H.Jones & J.Soltren, MIT in 2005!

And the list goes on and on, I’ve had enough. Google around yourself if you still feel cool with Facebook. All you need is “privacy” and “facebook” in one query. “Facebook” and “biometrics” is another good one, see if it produces the results you’re looking for.

Deactivation

If you’d like to go through the ordeal of asking Facebook, you can do yourself a favour and check out many blog posts that have already tried. Basically the process boils down to this:

1. Reactivate your facebook account (if necessary)
2. In Profile -> Edit, go through and delete every piece of information, field by field. prepare to cry
3. Wall post by Wall post delete every one. cry
4. Photos, not so bad go to Edit Album and check all the delete boxes for the photos then delete album.
5. Remove yourself from all networks (clever little leave network link at the bottom of the Networks page). This will take care of groups and events.
6. Delete all friends.

When you are done the profile page should revert to a example-like style with a preview encouraging you to start adding friends! Fight the temptation and send an e-mail to privacy@facebook.com with something along the lines of:

Dear Facebook Privacy Staff,
I have removed all of my profile content. Please remove my account from your database and confirm when this is complete.

account: email login

Regards,

Chater

The Response

Hi Herb,

Your information no longer appears on the site, and we have removed your login email address from our system.
Thanks,

Paul

User Operations

Facebook

Other Comments

What’s with this?

Please enter your full birthday. We are required to retrieve this information by law, but you will have control over whether others see it.

You’re not required by law to do anything. Sure in the U.S there is the COPPA, but (and I quote below) if you go read the laws you might realize it only has to do with a person’s age. It is meant to protect children’s privacy, which is fair enough; I wouldn’t want any kiddies using Facebook either.

(1) CHILD.ââ�¬â��The term “child” means an individual under the age of 13¹.

Sounds to me like all that has to be done here is verify my age. Why don’t they just ask for that?

The wording that is used is interesting as well. Why is Facebook retrieving information from you? For whom? As if I am worried about the noobs with accounts on there viewing my info; well, aside from the identity theives and fraudsters, who can make a killing with Facebook (ref SOPHOS), I don’t really care, its the corporation that we should be worried about. COPPA Section 1302.1

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