Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

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jonathanstrange

I "deleted" my FB more than 8 years ago, but since it was not possible to actually delete the data it was only disabled. In January I decided to re-activate it to get in touch with old acquaintances. Surprisingly, all of my pictures, contacts, and other interactions were there. Even a pending friend request was pending for 8 years.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, though, because FB stated clearly that you cannot delete your data. I just didn't believe they would keep it for so long. It felt weird.

Edit: Just a fun addition, I also made a fake account to promote Youtube videos against FB's EULA. To get more viewers I thought it might be a good idea to make arbitrary friend requests and must have had a certain tendency to click on attractive women. Curiously, at least half of them accepted immediately. One week later I got spammed with friend request of two kinds:

(a) Asian manufacturing sites offering all kinds of machinery and services. Most of them from China, but also some in other countries.

(b) Women posting half-naked pictures of themselves on FB, apparently doing that for a living.

None of them were my target audience. I guess successful FB marketing is more complicated.

That's interesting because refusing to delete personal information is going to be directly contrary to GDPR in a few months, the penalty for which will be 4% of global turnover.

So can I then "move to London" in my account, and then request a real delete?

Best "move to Paris" since London ain't going to be in the EU soon enough

It is absolutely possible to delete your Facebook account and profile permanently. It is harder to find (I had to search the help section for "permanently delete" or something), and they give you two weeks to change your mind. Of course, they still have tons of information about you, but I am tired of hearing people claim that you can only deactivate your account.

I deleted mine two years ago, but not before downloading my data. I haven't ever gone through it, but now I am interested to see if they included call logs and stuff.

Are you sure this was possible > 8 years ago? If I remember correctly, I researched this for quite some time then and didn't find any way of deleting the account and everything stored in it. But it's possible I overlooked the option, of course.

I believe in the past you had to open some kind of support request, as there wasn't an "automated" way to do it (and there was maybe still some kind of waiting period after having deactivated the account). It's certainly been made easier (they've gotten a lot of flack over the years oven this...)

it was possible in 2011 when I did

Have you tried to reactivate or re-register the account with the same details? Out of interest really

> I am tired of hearing people claim that you can only deactivate your account

I'm tired of FB (or anyone using similar tactics) hiding behind "but you can delete your account" while employing all manner of dark patterns and scare tactics to mess with people who want to do exactly that.

Maybe it's changed since you did it, but I walked a friend through it recently and it was painfully tedious (not just a bunch of "are you really, really sure"s, but a bunch of dark patterns trying to steer you away from or hide the option altogether).

I'd be surprised if even 1% of people who want to delete their account are successful.

I would not trust them with deleting any data. No deletion on another system can ever be verified.

When I deactivated my facebook account to see what happens, literally nothing changed. Everybody else still thinks I'm there, they can send me messages, etc. When I reactivated my account by logging in, it was as if I had merely logged out.

> I "deleted" my FB more than 8 years ago, but since it was not possible to actually delete the data it was only disabled. In January I decided to re-activate it to get in touch with old acquaintances. Surprisingly, all of my pictures, contacts, and other interactions were there. Even a pending friend request was pending for 8 years.

There's a bit of a mixed message here. When you reactivated your account, you wanted to get in touch with old acquaintances. Yet you expressed surprise when your contacts were still there, even though you presumably wanted them to be. Was that a pleasant surprise? Or you were reactivating your account only with the intention of starting from scratch 100%?

I'm assuming you deactivated, not deleted, your account.

I've deleted and restarted account. Does not have old data.

You can not see the old data but for sure it is there. They just don't make it obvious by linking it to the new account.

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