Facebook Removing Option To Be Unsearchable By Name
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The move towards complete availability of all digital information seems to be a force of history. Privacy advocates are beginning to sound like copyright advocates, demanding that the universe continue providing for them in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.
Like copyright/IP, privacy is more about use getting used to (and in some cases legislating) how things happen to be, not predesigned or derived from first principle rules or morality. If 99% of your existence occurs within a community of 150 people, very little is private. When you live in a 20th center city, you get a lot of anonymity. You can keep private life (even several of these) separate from your professional life. etc. Those were just inevitable consequences of how those societies were structured.
The internet was at first an anonymous place. Pre-2000 most people seemed to share the feeling that if their real name found its way to the world wide web, serial killers would come. Then 2000-2005 people started keeping online diaries, online photo libraries, online lots of personal information. Facebook catalyzed this process with a semi private system of friends that matched what people were used to in their normal lives.
The force of history that is 'all your data available to everyone everywhere' feels unstoppable. Data is data. It doesn't care if it's an email, SMS, baby photo or GPS log. It doesn't get deleted.
Maybe "Information wants to be free" was an understatement.
I feel very awkward trying to describe this, a clear sign that I don't understand it. I wish pg Joel Spolsky, Chris Anderson (or ideally, Douglas Adams - I really wish we still had him) or someone else who's good at this sort of abstract thing would write a good piece on it.
Though, obviously, the whole "Let the NGOs in the US guide and manage the world's Internet, we'll be cool and keep our hands off, honest!" argument has been blown to bits as the Internet hasn't really ever been free-and-in-the-open.
Perhaps individuals are just the low-hanging fruit and these are just the early stages of the process. However it strikes me that all the forces pushing for open-ness stand to profit from it and the relationship is rather one sided at this point. Facebook, to pick the obvious example, does not seem too forthcoming with information on who has access to the data you so freely and readily provide to them and what is done with it.
Perhaps once people connect the dots and realise that the reason their life insurance premuims are going up is because they are posting too many photos of themselves drinking at parties then the pendulum will swing the other way.
Some copyright defenders are like that, because their fortunes depend on interfering in other people's lives and devices, or getting the government to police people for them - because that is inherently the only way copyright restrictions can be maintained.
Privacy requires just the opposite - only a freedom from interference. It does require state enforcement, particularly a ban on companies requiring personal data as a condition of business. But people can still stay off Facebook, without thereby causing any harm to anyone else.
And we can have private communications, if only government allows people to set up secure digital systems. The only things preventing privacy are government snooping and laissez-faire economics; with real democracy and regulation of exploitive business practices we'd have a better balance. (But copyright would be unenforceable.)
IE, governments' access, collection & analysis of our "private data" is a sort of inevitability. One agent of an unstoppable force. BTW, governments' themselves are also victims of "private" information being accessed, collected & analyzed. That's what the wikileaks & (ironically) Snowden stuff was. Data getting free.
I'm hesitant to put my thoughts int a strong abstract statement because as I said, I don't feel like I have a good understanding of it. But "All your data available to everyone everywhere" might be where I'd start to construct it.
Once it's in gmail, Google have access to it and probably a few spy organizations. That's a few places that we know of. It will never be deleted and who knows who else will end up with it. Proliferation goes one way. It never goes back. One of these stores will eventually leak to the public like the US embassies' emails leaked to the public.
I'm claiming (hesitantly, please be nice) that I think that maybe this isn't a matter of policy or laws. It's not about what a government will decide to do. It's a tidal wave that we can't keep out. Computers store, copy and distribute information. All our information is digital. Eventually it will all get out into the wild. So if there's a photo in your phone. An email in your gmail account or a GPS log in your watch, that is future public information.
No matter what our opinions on globalization, or diversity of cultures are, the humanity is inevitably moving towards one culturally homogeneous world. This may not seem obvious if we look at history on the scale of a few centuries, but it becomes apparent if we look at our entire history as species. We started with tens of thousands of completely separate "worlds" that had nothing to do with one another, and slowly, through trade and money, religion and imperial expansions we have become a single "world" without a single completely independent culture left on Earth. Slowly we are also all agreeing on moral and political values, such as "democracy", "human rights" or "equal opportunities" (incidentally, values spread across the globe by western imperial expansion). If you want to object that there are still tons of cultures left that are all so different, that's simply not true. Can you imagine Indian cuisine without chili peppers? Or the Russians/Irish without potatoes? Or the Italians without tomatoes? The whole world smokes, no culture openly accepts slavery, and so on, and so forth. And all these things and ideas were introduced just in the past few centuries, an almost negligible amount of time compared to the rest of our history.
Anyways, so the idea of openness of information, free data, etc. definitely seems to be a similar force. Again, if we look at the evolution, for most of our history we lived in small bands where privacy was non-existent, the ability to gossip was what gave us a major evolutionary advantage over other species. Still, even today most of things we spend our time talking about is pure gossip (just think about the proportion of HN articles about the "celebrity" programmers going to this or that company). So this idea of privacy, secrecy, etc. is something very new and I guess only the history can show whether it'll stick or not (as you conjecture).
No matter what our opinions on globalization, or diversity of cultures are, the humanity is inevitably moving towards one culturally homogeneous world.
In terms of geographically-based culture, which I think you mean, I agree entirely - increasing interconnectivity is causing increasing similarity between different countries. However I think there's a countercurrent to this at play too: an explosion in non-geographically-based subcultures, caused by the same increasing interconnectivity, which allows communities to maintain critical mass despite their members being geographically disparate.
Take for example, emo subculture, or hipsters, or death metal, or political activists of a thousand different kinds, a huge (and increasing) number of distinct communities: but if you go to San Francisco, or London, or Melbourne, you'll find a very similar mix.
Those cities are all extremely diverse and highly interconnected examples of course, but I think it's hard to disagree that's where things are headed globally.
delete's Facebook account
https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576
Facebook is just shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of accommodating for it's users it wants its users to accommodate for facebook. These decisions are just silly and a slap in the face to anyone who wants a shred of privacy.
My name became incredibly generic when I did this, so bonus points for unsearchability.
I thought it was bizarre, and maybe just temporary, but it's there, and since I have my contacts merged in my phone, I have to remember to search for SunBurned rather than his name when I want to text him.
No, they are absolutely accommodating for their users -- and their users are advertisers. That is THE problem. Facebook Inc's #1 priority is making money (like all for-profit enterprises), and therefore their #1 priority is to make advertisers happy.
Not all fake names! About six months ago I went to interview on-site at Facebook. I have two Facebook accounts, a legacy from before testing accounts were actually available on the platform. One's my real account, the other is under the name of 'Johnny Appleseed'.
When you arrive at Facebook you check-in using the e-mail address you've been using to communicate with your recruiter. What I didn't realise was that Facebook's systems then automatically look up that e-mail address, and pre-populate your visitors badge with information from that account.
So the upshot of this was that for the rest of the day I was 'Johnny Appleseed'. Given I was interviewing for a iOS role this raised a few eyebrows with my interviewers. The receptionist told me this happens a lot for software engineering interviews.
They say they will, but I've had a ton of friends change their names to obviously very fake names that Facebook has allowed, including "Sauce Money" (a rapper).
I want to tell my friends "don't ever put up pictures that include me on facebook" but I can't because it's too big of a request at this point, and I'd end up being too much of a dick if I started making that demand. I really struggle with this. Facebook, that evil behemoth, has won big. I really just wish that it would get hacked or something so people stop trusting social networking sites. Come on blackhats, do your thing.
Good heavens, imagine the clusterfuck it'd be if everybody ran their own server, as advocated by at least one HN post per week. You'd never be able to shut them all down!
Sometimes I feel that people have reached a point where a vast majority couldn't understand why a person would want to write a novel under a pen name, or donate anonymously, or work quietly. They can understand wanting to make up a name, but just to have a cooler name, not as a misdirection.
What is the worse case scenario of people start widely adopting that notion? It becomes harder to run certain types of businesses that count on that not being true? We have to adopt new social etiquette for public photography if we don't want to appear rude?
However it is certain that putting the brakes on the rampant disregard for privacy does not have to result in such a pleasant extreme. "Banning unauthorized biographies" is many steps removed from "the public loses their trust in centralized social networks"
I hope you'll be OK, because it is almost inconceivable to me that the future will be more private with the progress of technology and miniaturization, and given how much people seem to care about it now.
I really can't say that I am bothered at the notion of somebody owning the information about themselves. If I write a story, I own that currently and other people cannot use that story without my permission. I'm just not seeing ownership of my life story as a particularly more bothersome concept.
Hell, throw a bone to historians and keep a concept of public domain after a period of time. I don't get to own other sorts of data forever, so that is fine.
Stories have many characters. If I cheat you, lie to you, call you names, win over your girlfriend, and steal your dog, can I prevent you from using my story without permission?
This notion of information ownership is relevant in practical things. Look at the use of SLAPPs [1], for example. Or credit reporting, or Yelp, or even reporting crimes. All could be impacted by the radical version of personal ownership of personal data.
The right of ownership of fiction is mainly a commercial right: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." So it doesn't really apply in non-commercial contexts. It's very limited in practice.
The book The Quantum Thief [2] has an interesting society where information ownership extends that far. If you don't have contract agreement to see or remember somebody, you won't.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief
Nevertheless, I think you are seeing problems where there would be none. Reporting a crime involves violating the perpetrates privacy? Well sometimes stopping a crime or defending yourself violates the perpetrators right to not be struck or even killed. We seem to operate pretty well with self-defense exceptions to general bans on violence. It is easy to imagine analogues.
Similarly, you can't criticise business leaders or civil servants. So corruption becomes rife.
I suppose you could make a special case for photos, but I don't really see anything that specifically commends it relative to other information about you.
Would this concept of ownership of information be particularly stronger than our existing concept of ownership of creative works? If I tell a friend a story then I and he consider myself to be the "owner" of that story, but I certainly don't tend to mind if he retells the story as his own in a noncommercial context, so long as I am not present. However if he gets my story published, then I am going to be rather upset.
If a friend wants to talk about me with other people at a bar, that is fine I guess. If he writes a book about me, I would absolutely consider that a considerable breach of trust. I have no problem with being on the receiving end of this notion of privacy.
The fact that a piece of information passes through a volatile medium before ending up in a more permanent form doesn't change the value or ownership of the information.
On a tangent, Google Glass passive audio and video recordings will be much more damaging to one's privacy than photos shared intentionally by friends.
In fact, the US is one of the few Western countries that doesn't recognize that principle, most others are only strengthening their legislation in that regard, against heavy lobbying from the US government and Silicon Valley corporations.
Then there's "privacy" in the sense of being a private person: you don't want your photos and conversations widely seen or read in the first place.
If Facebook and all the other data brokers could choose one of these definitions of "privacy" to lodge foremost in your brain, which would they pick?
Which definition would you call industrial, and which one cultural?
It sounds like you're just a private person, ancarda. By all means, carry on.
On the other hand, unless you have some rational reason to not have your existence recorded, this sounds like passive aggressive self-destruction and hatred.
I swear nobody knows what passive aggressive actually means. They asked not to have their picture taken (presumably politely) and the request was complied with. End of story.
I'm just going to leave this here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior
In psychology, passive-aggressive behavior is characterised by a habitual pattern of passive resistance to expected work requirements, opposition, stubbornness, and negativistic attitudes in response to requirements for normal performance levels expected of others. Most frequently it occurs in the workplace where resistance is exhibited by such indirect behaviors as procrastination, forgetfulness, and purposeful inefficiency, especially in reaction to demands by authority figures, but it can also occur in interpersonal contexts.
or...
http://psychology.about.com/od/pindex/g/what-is-passive-aggr...
The phrase passive-aggressive is used to describe behavior or a personality trait that involves acting indirectly aggressive rather than directly aggressive. Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn.
Passive-aggressive behavior may manifest itself in a number of different ways. For example, a person might repeatedly make excuses to avoid certain people as a way of expressing their dislike or anger towards those individuals.
They were direct in their request (not passive) and not aggressive either (no negative behaviors).
One more...
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/passive-aggressive-behavior...
Passive-aggressive behavior is a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly addressing them. There's a disconnect between what a passive-aggressive person says and what he or she does.
For example, a passive-aggressive person might appear to agree — perhaps even enthusiastically — with another person's request. Rather than complying with the request, however, he or she might express anger or resentment by failing to follow through or missing deadlines.
Specific signs of passive-aggressive behavior include:
Resentment and opposition to the demands of others
Procrastination and intentional mistakes in response to others' demands
Cynical, sullen or hostile attitude
Frequent complaints about feeling underappreciated or cheated
Honestly, I prefer to live life rather than live the process of creating a record of a life. I also prefer things to be ephemeral, rather then so every-decision-you-make-is-permanent. I think people are less adventurous when they feel like they're performing for posterity.
Of course, I also have a healthy dose of paranoia. The news lately has made me very happy about the choices that I was making before 9/11.
People are generally good about it. If people want to take a picture of you or write about you in their blog or something, it means they like you. They'll probably be amused that you're so private. Of course, you probably will have to give your best friends a picture once every 10-15 years, but they already know you're a weirdo, and won't be posting it anywhere.
I completely agree. I think a lot of decisions I make are based off cultural reasons. My family has always had respect for privacy, although only "offline". ie. they'll knock before coming in. However, as they don't know much about technology, they all use Facebook and tag every photo. I feel like they seem to believe the privacy they enjoy offline extends online somehow.
Family and friends taking pictures (and potentially spreading them) is one thing, but I guess you do fly or buy your groceries somewhere while a camera is watching. In other words: Why this rather strict policy with family and friends, if you cannot help being 'remembered' anywhere you go in public?
Aren't family and friends asking the same question? What do you answer?
It just feels like we're heading towards 1984. The way we use technology is changing. Prior to the internet, I'd have little reason to complain about photography. It's only with the advent of tagging on Facebook that I have become a lot more strict.
I don't know if they are legally required though. If they are, what you want is a court case that finds that Facebook needs a photo release from each person before allowing that person to be "tagged" in a posted photo.
I don't use Facebook, but would be unsurprised to find that somewhere in their terms of use you grant a blanket photo release to them.
Computer give us information aged weller, posts people trust with their very real life, because of that fact information-life-and-death is no longer our primary fight for humanity, if infopsychotech functions that we truly can not forget alll our friends.
Our real diasporas may have real life informed people who can respond to all our lives equally intact, if with infotech promises we can relate, can be a humanizing force if humanity can no longer delete our life facts.
Whenever someone new photographs me or my children and it's in a private setting, I tell them to not post it on Facebook and also explain why. They generally understand. I don't care they think I'm weird and I guess I can't prevent it when they do put it on Facebook. But I communicate my wishes all the time and generally people respond very well.
The "well, don't use it" response is utter crap given how many real life functions are being tied into these social networks.
Your stalker already had access to that from every tag and mention of you anywhere on Facebook.
I guess I've always kept relatively tight control over my data, at least whether I want aspects of data about me to be public. I say that even though I make a tremendous amount of information about me very accessible (name, age, address, family, phone number, email address, etc). However, for other people who don't have that luxury, I wonder why in the world they're using Facebook?
Events are public if the event creator makes them public.
Have you ever tried to find your own address? Mine is published and easily accessible if you know my name. Same for the address of the house I grew up in. Same for all my family members. I never put it on Facebook or anywhere else public... My brother never had a Facebook. I guess they got it from public records, however I rent. It somehow made its way into the public sphere and it makes me pretty uncomfortable.
Once a friend of mine was looking for addresses to send wedding invitations. He was able to find every single address that he needed without asking anyone. For some reason he didn't want to ask anyone their addresses if he didn't have to.
I use Facebook so that I can connect with people I meet. If I don't exchange contact info with someone I meet, but they know my name, it's great for them to search and find me on Facebook. I don't want my Facebook connections to solely be people I choose to friend.
I guess it boils down to how people use the service.
Real Question: Why do you have an account, but not want people to be able to find you?
EDIT: Thanks for the responses, some of them make a lot of sense that I didn't think of initially.
It's a placeholder for Pages, and for the rare case I want to see baby photos.
* edit: not to encourage FB but would probably pay for a business page that didn't need a personal email or setting up a fake account just carry it.
It is frustrating that the largest social media network is darn right hostile to large swathes of people.
Lots of events and groups solely exist on facebook. I think it is kind of awful that we let a company cut people out of their real life social networks just because they have stronger privacy requirements than 'normal' people.
If someone has interacted with a public page/event, you don't need to see the person's profile, you just need to see the public/page event (which is indexed by Google).
I signed up when I was young, and now my FB account is a liability I have to manage. (Which FB keeps making more difficult.) I communicate with friends to share, not to present an image to the world at large. I stopped adding FB "friends" years ago to prevent future issues, and I would rather people just believe that I don't have one until I can unwind the youthful indiscretion of signing up in the first place.
(I wasn't among those that objected to the "Friend Request" mission. After all, who hasn't wanted to blow Zuck's head off at one time or another? :-) )
There is one thing holding me back though. Photos. When I'm out with friends etc. I don't take photos. There are usually one or two people who do and I can rely on those photos being made available to me through Facebook/tagging. If I delete my Facebook account I lose the opportunity to view/save those photos.
I've never understood what the argument for widespread adoption of encryption on the internet was. To get the same utility, you'd have to have a huge "private" network, which would quickly become non-private again.
In light of this, it is disturbing that more and more systems of society are being moved on to the internet. Health records being particularly omninous. You can choose not to post or have profiles on social networks. It looks going forward we will no longer have the option to keep private medical info private.
So it is possible to delete your account "completely". I did this once and I have never been more happier. I actually spent time being tense when Facebook rolled out a new privacy blunder and would rush to check all settings. Imagine the time wasted.
So to all those who are contemplating deleting the account but can't - do it. It's totally worth it.
Although, I hear that the EU (or maybe just the UK?) has strict provisions around keeping data, and so those users who choose to delete their account really do have their data wiped. But not the rest of us.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145987
2. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/29/facebook-reminds-user...
Certain information is needed to provide you with services, so we only delete this information after you delete your account. Some of the things you do on Facebook aren't stored in your account, like posting to a group or sending someone a message (where your friend may still have a message you sent, even after you delete your account). That information remains after you delete your account."[1]
"Maybe that was true in the past, but today when you delete your data it is gone. Trust me, I wrote it myself. The law enforcement guidelines that have been circulating recently corroborate this."[2]
I do wonder what sort of "things you do on Facebook" aren't stored on your account, though.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info#deletion
That is Facebook's core problem. They are the boy that cried wolf. We have seen them lie about privacy. We have seen how they have eroded our privacy, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by mistake. More importantly, we have seen them make these invasions into our privacy, and genuinely not seem to care.
The take-way from this, is that Facebook has become untrustable. As more people realize that, the more people will start deleting their accounts.
The challenge is (as a person that has deleted their Facebook account), is that you have to overcome the addiction and then the deal with the loss. You have to finally accept that the things you think you are missing out on really aren't that important. I personally found this quite hard to accept.
Giving up Facebook and giving up smoking are relatively similar, and I've done both.
That is kind of the best thing one could really do to subvert the facebook. It isnt enough to change name, or to misinform or deactivate etc, the best thing is really to offer the lower the quality of everything below crap, to drive others away too. To more fertile and free lands of networking. Whatever that is, it will be somewhere soon enough.
Back in time I remember we users had control of our news feed, we could actually stay in touch with friends, these days we have very little control of what gets shown the news feed, we dont even know how the algorithm works. Far too often we miss important information because facebook decided to post ads was more important. Well. Bring it on facebook, here is more inane crap.
I'm thinking of a script that grabs a random YouTube comment more than N characters long and posts it someplace else completely out of context.
I'd expect the results to be like @Horse_ebooks, where "horse" refers to heroin.
mknoise(){
curl -Ls http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random/ | sed -n '/<p>/,/<\/p>/p' \
| sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' -e '/^*$/d' -e '/article/g' | \
perl -MList::Util=shuffle -e 'print shuffle(<STDIN>);' | sed -n '/^.\{35\}/p' | head -n1
}The degree to which users are accommodating Facebook's increasingly onerous privacy policies is becoming ridiculous.
Ideally, this plan will also work for when that service becomes a burden, so I can continue asking my friends to switch to new services.
Also, I know I could just talk to my friends more often, and ask them regularly if there are events they've forgotten to invite me to, but that will make me sound needy and pathetic, much like someone refusing to own a telephone, and instead showing up at their friends' houses unannounced, just in case they had something to communicate.
Really, it is entirely possible to schedule events without Facebook. It was possible to do so when FB was not there, and it is possible to do it now :)
They want me there, so why shouldn't they make an effort? If they don't want me there at least that badly, why would I want to be there? Luckily, I don't have that problem - people text me, or email me, or try to run into me or something.
I also remember last time I changed my name I had a hard time getting around their validation. Any hints on how to defeat that check using an alias?
I just checked and it seems they have also limited the number of times you can change your name. Apparently I only have 4 changes left.
"Won't get invited to events." What?
Pick up the phone, text, email, IM, irc, smoke signals, TALK ffs!
Or instead, be honest and admit you're hooked like any average user.
>Pick up the phone, text, email, IM, irc, smoke signals, TALK ffs!
Here is a cute notion. Something you apparently are incapable of thinking of. Acquaintances. Friends. Not bffs. Just friends. And people you want to stay in contact with.
How many do you have? By your talk, I am guessing none. And if everyone would be like you then yes, no need for facebook because we all could just "pick up the phone" and talk to the one friend we all have.
It may sound strange to you, but many of us have a lot of friends and acquaintances. People we are still interested in to learn what is going on in their life but at the same time people we don't want to call as if we were bffs.
So, given that situation, what do you propose? Making like it is the 1990s and start mass emailing all these people what you normally just put up on facebook? Everyone in bcc so they don't see each other? Keeping the tone of the post as general as possible cause you can't mention any names? Great stuff. Especially since that is grad a spam as not everyone might want to read your stuff. But they will if you keep stuffing their inbox. When they go on facebook, they want to check up on everyone they added. When I go check my email I want to check my email and not start treating it like my facebook newsfeed!
So why don't all you mindless bashers pack it in, leave the internet altogether and start using your proposed smoke signals and enjoy your hipster elitism and privacy heaven. Just so you know, if I am seeing smoke, I am calling the fire department. So you might want to pick something even more private.
Don't worry, we won't take your facebook away! It's gonna be okay! You sound like a junkie.
I guess the primary use-case is to help prevent cyberbullying?
E.g. replace "a" (97) with "а" (1072).
I have a family member in such a situation. Fortunately, they have stayed away from Facebook and other social media out of fear of something like this.
Congratulations, guys (and I choose that term somewhat deliberately, with reference to gender bias in domestic violence statistics): You've just branded yourselves as well as your product assholes.
On the other hand, if the spelling of your name is unique in the digital world, as mine appears to be, everything you say and do online can be traced to you individually. (By employers, for instance. Who want to know how old you are, or whether you're married, or how you spend your spare time. To pick a bland example from among hundreds.)
Lawyers can now test market your class action lawsuit with $100 of FB ads.
MVL - Minimal Viable Lawsuit. Like/G+ by Eric Ries. :-)
1) Because, certain information can be considered valuable - For example old comments from friends/family on relevant photos, semi-private get-togethers/events, etc. Because all these can be considered as good memory/archives of your personal life and the stuff that reminds people of their relationship with you. For me I consider, these valuable, so it's a no no to delete my profile as I will end up losing these. I can technically take a back up if I want, but who opens their backed up index.html once a week, if not daily?
However, leaving your profile undeleted means you lose a lot of privacy. So how am I going to hide my profile if it's publicly searchable?
First, understand that your live profile is not only searchable, but also indexable by google.
Facebook ALSO hands over the stuff you 'like' to search engines. So, you now like a famous pornstar's fan page/even her post? Well, good luck getting it removed from Google!
All I need to do to find out what you've liked on facebook is search for your name in quotes:
"<insert your name here>"
site:http://facebook.com "<insert name here>"
2) So, back to my point. Deleting is too extreme. Why? Because deleting also makes you lose control of what's out there. If I am correct, I've observed in the past that even deleted profiles are not actually deleted, but are assigned an empty profile with just your name and the default profile picture and this stuff is still sent to search engines. So, if you delete your profile, you lose control over this.
What I may suggest doing is temporarily deactivate your profile (There's an option for this.). This will actually make your profile totally invisible (from search and indexing) and also from my observations, temporarily un-index you from search engines. This is good because you still have control over your profile, you own your data and search engine visibility.
So, what I technically do is, login into Facebook to check what my friends are upto, say once or twice a month, and then deactivate it. For example, I like to keep additional family and friends separate and hence I maintain multiple additional profiles for them, distinctive from my main profile, instead of using Facebook's unreliably stupid privacy system (circles). Now, I wouldn't want my friends to discover my family profile and vice versa. Then, there's the list of dudes whom I will never want to add me, ever. So, maintaining multiple profiles also, helps me maintain a fake presence on Facebook, while also masking my search engine visibility of my real profile with the fake profiles. This works well for me, ymmv. So, just think twice before deleting your profile.
Cheers.
Deleting my Facebook was very easy and straightforward. 1) downloading the backup. 2) permanently deleted my account, not deactivate . 3) communication to my friends I no longer use Facebook and how they can reach me. I still recieve invitations and photo's via IM and mail, no big deal!