Burned At Both Ends

Have you ever wondered what happens to all your personal information if you want to get out of the social networking machine? Steven Mansour found out the hard way when he tried to close his account on Facebook:

2504 steps to closing your Facebook account (via Digg)

The article is by turns hilarious and sinister. It turns out that Facebook don’t close your account at all; they merely “deactivate” it, but keep everything (photos, wall posts… everything) on their servers in case you wish to reactivate in the future. That’s very thoughtful of them, but it potentially means an unsuspecting punter could leave Facebook, unaware that their personal details are still being held.

If you think that’s crazy, read the rest of the post to find out the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through to finally get them to delete the account. Not that I’m thinking of doing anything of the sort; I’m enjoying Facebook very much right now, and the recently released applications have the potential to make it the next massive web phenomenon - effectively an online operating system.

However, before we all jump headfirst onto the next big internet bandwagon, it’s worth knowing how the company behind it all operates. It wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook made a U-turn on this non-deletion policy once this news spreads.