Hacker News Reader

Additionally, the only info they need is your name, birthday and photo. Anything else can be blocked out. I don't really consider that 'giving them my government issued id'.

Requiring the same standard of verification for activating an account. Of course, they want to make it easy so it's unlikely to happen...

If he knew his password he could deactivate the account using the same standard of verification as was used for reactivating it.

He does know it, but Facebook is requiring that he change it before deleting his account.

>Allow anyone to request that an account is deleted?

"anyone" with the proper access credentials?

When said credentials have been leaked elsewhere, they aren't "proper" anymore.

The alternative would be to actually delete the account as it should have happened in the first place when the user requested it years ago.

Send a verification email as for a lost password?

The alternative would have been for Facebook to close the account in 2012, as the user wanted.

> What would the alternative be?

Not to re-activate an old account without email re-verification.