I'm 
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.
Tags: Facebook, Social Networking
November 19, 2007 at 8:35 pm
It *is* possible to get Facebook to close your account without deleting everything by hand. See:
http://blogs.sun.com/alanbur/entry/how_to_leave_facebook
http://blogs.sun.com/alanbur/entry/how_to_leave_facebook_followup
March 15, 2008 at 10:25 am
CLOSE FACEBOOK
April 24, 2008 at 5:54 pm
[...] (”forgetfulness”) is managed, and especially what happens at the endgame. Compare the nightmarish experiences people have had on trying to leave Facebook with the neat way Dopplr handles account closure, for example: one can never be quite sure one is [...]
February 9, 2009 at 12:49 pm
All I wanted to know was how to close down my Facebook account.
Now I realize that nobody has ever really set up an account at Facebook because otherwise they´d be able to close down their account profile.
What seems to be going on instead is that people are allowed to open up and close a facebook.com site once , and then never again which means that I can´t close down my account for the second time and that nobody else has been able to close down a facebook.com account for the second time.
Was my first attempt to close down a facebook.com account really the only one that has ever been sucessful in the entire history of facebook? I mean because I couldn´t revisit that account just as intended?
February 9, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I went to facebook several seconds ago and went to a special deleting site that said my account would be deleted within 14 days.
It had been set up only to be used for slightly more than several weeks until I discovered that Facebook is associated with the CIA. When I tried to talk about it with my older brother he didn´t want to listen.
Thingvellir,
April 2, 2009 at 5:07 pm
please closed my facebook address email address suhaly@hotmail.co.uk
April 27, 2009 at 8:55 pm
i want to deactivate my facebook account on personal reasons.
October 21, 2009 at 7:30 pm
plz close my face book account
April 27, 2009 at 8:57 pm
please close my facebook account
May 5, 2009 at 1:51 am
Please close my facebook account.
July 28, 2009 at 6:27 pm
kapatın benim facebooku
August 22, 2009 at 3:03 pm
close a facebook
August 22, 2009 at 3:04 pm
close facebook
October 6, 2009 at 2:09 pm
hello im paul eid and i have an account facebook and i can’t login into it and i want to remove it.
can u help me what to do plzzz
and thanks
reply.
October 27, 2009 at 8:36 am
Close the facebook account
October 30, 2009 at 4:58 pm
FACEBOOK CLOSE TO 091030 17.57
THANK
November 2, 2009 at 1:27 pm
i want to close my account in facebook
November 2, 2009 at 1:28 pm
close facebook
November 2, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Is there a way to close an account and take out a picture that someone has tagged? Someone tagged me from a picture and I want it take out.
November 3, 2009 at 2:28 pm
my identity has been stolen need all accounts closed
November 12, 2009 at 6:45 pm
please can u clouse my acount thanku very much