Facebook Account Deactivation Timebomb
It turns out Facebook won’t delete your account. They only “deactivate” your account, which means they keep all your account information in their databases. In other words, Facebook holds your information hostage. If you know how to delete all of your information from Facebook’s servers *permanently* let us know how you did it. Here’s a quote from Facebook’s deactivation form, almost sounds like a threat:
Note: Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups. If you opt out, you will NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends.
As of right now my account is only “deactivated,” which means I need to keep my email address registered indefinitely, the one I used to sign up for Facebook. Because Facebook will probably try to win me back–like Myspace has since I deleted my account there too. If I don’t keep that domain registered it will expire, and a new owner could request my Facebook password with a catchall and take over my account. Unlikely but entirely possible. The new owner could simply click “I forgot my password.”
So not only does Facebook hold your data hostage, they threaten your reputation by inviting an account-takeover, which means I get stuck with extra hosting charges, renewing the domain for eternity, just to keep my account secure in Facebook limbo.
Update: Even after deactivation, after opting out of all email communications from Facebook, they just sent me this:
Hi PJ,
You have deactivated your Facebook account. You can reactivate your account at any time by logging into Facebook using your old login email and password. You will be able to use the site like you used to.
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
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Hi how to change my tagged.com Birthdate. it is deactivated day and month is working but year is deactivated …please reply soon
thanks
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By the way, there is now a way to “delete” your account, maybe because of all my complaints:
http://ferodynamics.com/how-to-delete-facebook/
The process takes two weeks. And who knows if the data is actually deleted or just flagged in the database. But at least this should stop the spam, the begging to “reactivate” etc.
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hmmm… Might be wise not to join that in the first place.
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That’s a good question. A year? Two years? Forever? We don’t know yet. If enough people come here and demand an answer, that will force Facebook to respond.
Some countries have laws regarding how long a company can keep someone’s personal records stored in a database, but that may only apply to search engines. In my opinion, I don’t think the US cares much about privacy at this time, I think right now we’re moving in the opposite direction–less privacy.
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How long can you keep your facebook acount deactivated for?
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How long does facebook keep deactivated accounts?
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If you’re not sure about tagging after deactivation, make sure you untag yourself from all pictures first, remove all your own pictures, and change as much information as possible before you deactivate. So if you are tagged, it won’t matter much. However, I don’t think Facebook allows you to change your name–so yes, I think it’s possible you could be tagged after deactivation, but I don’t know for sure.