Registered on Facebook? It will not be easy to get out.

Are you registered on Facebook.com? Your contract may be for life.

Some users have found that completely removing personal data from Facebook is extremely difficult. This again raised the issue of the use of personal information by this social network.

Facebook offers users the option to deactivate their account. At the same time, an exact copy of all your data is stored on Facebook servers for an indefinite period of time.
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On Monday, February 11, under pressure from users, Facebook made some concessions in its policy of handling user accounts.

Nipon Das, 34, director of a consulting company in Manhattan, describes his unsuccessful attempts to remove his Facebook account with the words from the song “Hotel California”: “You can check out any time, but you never leave us. ")

It took Das two months of correspondence with Facebook support to erase most of his personal information from the site. He achieved this only by sending an e-mail with the threat of a lawsuit. But even after that, one of the journalists was able to find an empty Das account and send him an e-mail via Facebook.

The technological barriers erected by Facebook in the way of wanting to delete your account have a rational commercial reason: they allow former Facebook users to easily restore their account. Facebook press officer Amy Sezak (Amy Sezak) explains it this way: “Deactivating an account means that the user can reactivate it at any time, and all the information will again be available.”

But it also means that you cannot leave the site without leaving a trace. Facebook's terms of use state: "You can remove your content from the site at any time." But further: "You agree that the company may keep archival copies of your content."

The site does not inform leaving users that they themselves must remove all information from their account. This means that a user, not knowing this, can leave any information on Facebook servers - from his e-mail to a credit card number.

Only those who have come into direct contact with the Facebook support service receive information that they must, line by line, delete all information in their profile, messages on the “wall”, be discharged from groups, etc.

“Users can completely remove all data from their account, and then deactivate it,” says Facebook spokesman. - “They can also write a letter to Facebook with a request to delete the account, and then it will be completely removed from the database”

Other social networks, such as MySpace or Friendster, may require the user to confirm their intentions several times, but in the end they completely delete the account.

“Most sites, even dating sites, give you the option to completely delete an account,” says Das.

Nipon Das joined Facebook after receiving several invitations from friends. Das decided to leave Facebook, finding most of his work colleagues on the site. “I work in a small office,” he says. “I can’t even think of my employees being able to go in there and follow my private life.”

“After I discovered that one of my subordinates visited my page, I decided to leave,” he adds.

Hidden storage of information from deactivated accounts has increased fears of abuse by Facebook of users' personal data, especially against the background of Facebook's advertising technology, which allows users to track purchases made. At first, this technology did not provide an explicit procedure for users to refuse to use it. Such a procedure was introduced only after the scandal and public protest, signed by 50 thousand users. Facebook management had to apologize.

28-year-old Canadian Stephen Mansour spent two weeks in July to remove his account from Facebook. After that, he wrote an emotional post on his blog, www.stevenmansour.com , entitled "2504 steps needed to close your Facebook account."

Mansour decided to leave a few months after registering on Facebook. “I am tired of constant emails and e-mail,” he says. “It has too intruded on my life.”

The post of Mansur, posted on Digg.com, was viewed by more than 87 thousand users. Mansour says that the traffic was so great that it crashed his server.

This post prompted Magnus Wallen (Magnus Wallin) to create on Facebook a group of How to permanently delete your Facebook account (How to completely remove your account from Facebook). He did this after leaving Facebook, creating a new account and finding that all the data from his previous account is still available.

“I want Facebook to have information for all those who want to leave it,” says Wallen.

Already on Monday, almost 3,000 people joined the group, by the evening of Tuesday it had more than 7,000 members. (More than 8000 at the time of the transfer. - Approx. Trans.). “I really did not know that they retain your information after deactivating the account,” one of the group members wrote. “I’m not going to leave before I graduate, but I want to know how to do it.”

PS In response to a wave of dissatisfaction on the part of Facebook users, on Tuesday announced a softening of its position and ease of deleting user accounts.

The help page now contains information that users who want to completely delete their account should send an e-mail to the company with a request for this. However, the ability to self-delete an account by “pressing a button” is still missing.

"We are constantly working to improve the user interface," said Katie Geminder, Facebook director of user interface and design. “We are assessing the effects of yesterday’s changes, and if additional steps are needed related to the account deletion procedure, we will test various implementations and evaluate them.”

The updated help page now contains the question “How to delete my account” and the answer: “If you don’t intend to use Facebook later and wish to delete your account, we will take care of that. Keep in mind that in this case you will not be able to recover your information. ”.

And further: “If you want to delete your account, contact us using the form at the bottom of the page and confirm your request in the text field.”

Katie Geminder said that Facebook’s policy is a reflection of the fact that many users are returning to Facebook after a break in using the site. “Daily the number of users reactivating their accounts is about half the number of users deactivating accounts,” she added.