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Comment by PrimeDirective | Hacker News Reader

I "deleted" my account on Facebook about 7 years ago. This January they randomly reactivated it just like that. It's public and visible. I haven't logged in there, because that would just show them I want it back. I'm pretty sure this is in breach with their own terms. And maybe even illegal in the EU. I haven't had the time to take any action not am I sure what should I even do. Maybe report this to some EU watchdog?

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To avoid that kind of stuff, when I deleted my account a few years back, I used an automated script to delete all my posts. Then I went through my profile and replaced all fields with empty or no fake data.

If they ever reactivate my account, there's not much left to see.

By the way, I thought quitting Facebook was going to be hard. But I haven't regretted it a second. Same thing with Whatsapp.

> Then I went through my profile and replaced all fields with empty or no fake data.

Facebook/WhatsApp is a gold mine for the NSA and the CIA (as well as others). I would be surprised if they ever deleted any data when you "update" a field. It seems far more likely that they keep 100% of all data ever entered and just display the latest entry of your "update history".

I can confirm they keep old data, you can get a sample when you download your data archive in your Facebook settings.

Not deleting data is a crime under EU law, which is interesting.

It is not a crime currently, and even under the GDPR it's not absolute, it also gives most companies an easy way out as they can deny requests based on "for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;". https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/

Also "deletion" and "processing" are very vaguely defined terms. Data can be made inaccessible while complying with deletion, but more importantly data can be abstracted in a manner that it is accessible but still compliant with the right to be forgotten.

I've worked on a few solutions for deep analytics this past year specifically designed to keep the data while being 100% compliant with the silly GDPR regulations including the right for erasure.

The right to be forgotten is entirely separate.

This is deleting data that you have contributed yourself.

Any data you have submitted, you have to be able to revoke, and get removed.

No, the right to be forgotten is not a separate issue.

The new EU privacy regulation is the GDPR and it has a data deletion clause but it's not absolute.

There is no EU law that mandates hard deletion of data.

Member states can have stricter laws but the two I am familiar with which are the DPA (U.K.) and BDSG (Germany) also do not mandate it.

There is also no definition of data you've submitted or data that has been collected only consent to store and or process data.

The BDSG literally has 3 sections that demand hard deletion of data.

This is not something new and surprising, this has been long discussed.

Again, deletion as in an actual destructive process isn't required by any EU regulation.

That’s an interesting interpretation, because when I asked the ULD, they had quite a different interpretation of that.

The data can be deleted or anonymised, and the deletion can also be soft, as long as no one can query your data specifically no one really cares how it's stored.

https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/3-502-4080?transi...

I get Facebook but why did you ditch WhatsApp? If you don't get bogged down in groups it's just a slight upgrade on SMS no?

Facebook owns whatsapp and can change the encryption keys at will without the conversation owners knowing.

If "Show security notifications" is enabled in security settings then they'd get caught, so I don't think Facebook is going to start doing that. The address book and metadata they have access to are more useful to them anyway.

except for all the false positives. every time someone gets a new phone in a group chat, someone has to ask "did you change your phone or is someone snooping at you", which creeps them out, because it's off by default, and so we ask less and ignore it, "probably changed their phone".

it's terrible ux for security, it could have been much more transparent and actually encouraging proper security behaviour.

It really grinds my gears when an honest question is downvoted here in HN of all places.

They still collect all the metadata. They know with whom you communicate, and how often. They know with whom you're in a group chat and the names of those groups. They know your profile picture.

(Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased though since I'm affiliated with Threema. I think privacy in day to day communication is very important though, that was my reason for quitting.)

Guessing because Facebook owns WhatsApp now.

If they can undelete your account, can't they also undelete all your posts?

I used a script to delete everything before deactivating. Unfortunately this caused some negative feelings from friends who I had unfriended when I decided to reactivate the account. In hindsight easily avoided mistake.

Since Facebook accounts can be easily reactivated by accident, or phantom causes as users here pointed out, I would next time use a tool that sent a message to each friend explaining the situation before deletion.

> Unfortunately this caused some negative feelings from friends who I had unfriended

Says volumes about how social media manipulates people with things that don't matter one whit IRL.

> Unfortunately this caused some negative feelings from friends

that's Facebook's toxic behaviour right there. it's disgusting! purposefully (yes) driving a wedge and animosity between me and my friends because I dared to do something that you / your platform doesn't like?? fuck that. I've broken (irl) contact with people who (consistently) tried that.

this is textbook toxic behaviour and psychological manipulation, how does anyone put up with this shit.

> To avoid that kind of stuff, when I deleted my account a few years back, I used an automated script to delete all my posts.

Worse still, they've gone out of their way to make this as difficult as possible. There's no bulk delete in any of their apps or API. We all know why.

Could you please share the script you used?

There is a chrome extension: The F___book Post Manager

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fbook-post-manager...

Are there still scripts that will delete all Facebook posts? I'm not sure if that works any more.

Could you mention the alternative to WhatsApp that you use currently?

Threema. Self funded, no investors. Hosted in Switzerland on own hardware. Focus is on maximizing privacy and not having/storing any customer data. (Disclaimer: I'm an employee/developer.)

Not OP, but: Check out Signal and Telegram for example.

or even Matrix/Riot

I'm using Matrix/Riot to communicate with two of my friends. It's really nice in general. But if you want to use E2E encryption, the key exchange is really tedious. Every few months, when someone gets a new phone or accidentally logs out of his account, we need to meet in person to compare fingerprints.

Of course, even if you leave out the E2E encryption, it's still about as secure as Telegram's default settings. And with E2E encryption, it should be about as secure as Signal is (I'm not a cryptographer, though, so take this with a grain of salt). However, if the user is not experienced with key verification, I'd always recommend Signal over Riot.

> But if you want to use E2E encryption, the key exchange is really tedious.

Agree. But that part is still alpha in current release, so I hope they will improve over time.

+10 for telegram

Telegram server is not open source right?

Unfortunately, currently not all about Telegram is open-source: https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source-everything

absolutely illegal in the EU, learn more about their countless violations on http://europe-v-facebook.org/

Have you considered your account details were compromised and somebody else logged in and reactivated it in the process?

Yes, I did consider that it was hacked or something. But that still means the account was/is restorable and not actually deleted like they lead me to believe.

I don't think anyone has logged in, since none of the details have been changed.

This was my immediate thought. Mine has been deactivated for 4+ years and this hasn't happened.

Almost the exact same timeline. I 'deleted' my account in 2010. My wife showed me my activated profile earlier this year.

I logged in again and re-deleted it. But I somehow doubt it's actually gone.

Are you sure it's your account and not just a fake profile copying your data (by some spam bot)? Not sure how to verify this though.

However, 7 years seems like a long time span for Spammers to wait and revive that data.

You could try to use the report button and say it's a fake profile.

I've had the same problem with Myspace, 3 years ago. They restored my deleted account and they wouldn't let me log in. Regaining access was much harder than expected [1].

[1] https://darekkay.com/blog/recently-checked-myspace-account/

Did you have a weak password or one which you used elsewhere, where it could have been leaked?

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