Facebook: deactivated, not deleted or contact the help desk
After finally managing to convince a friend of mine who lives in Dublin to get on Facebook (primarily in order to stay in touch), low and behold I discovered that she quietly vanished off the face of Facebook. I didn't get a notification about that...
Previously I was told that disappearing from this social network site is not as easy as joining it and I was presuming that deletion of one's account is not possible. Deletion for users indeed is not possible. But deactivation is.
And you must love Facebook for the possible options given:
I don't feel safe on the site.
I spend too much time using Facebook.
I have another Facebook account.
This is temporary. I'll be back.
I need to fix something in my account.
I don't understand how to use the site.
I receive too many emails from Facebook.
I don't find Facebook useful.
Facebook is resulting in social drama for me.
Other [please explain further].
Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows to cancel the account and in that case the cancellation is irreversible.
So I had two news for my friend: firstly, she indeed became invisible. Yet, secondly, the traces were still there...
However, complete deletion of one's profile is possible, although one has to contact Facebook on that. Before that (and before the deactivation) it is requested to remove any profile content distributed on Facebook: sent and received messages, friends, comments/posts on all of your walls, comments/posts on other peoples walls, all your photos, you will have to leave all the networks and groups, transfer the admin rights to someone else, clear every last bit of information from your profile. Then contacting Facebook and if no traces are left - voila, you will be deleted. At least that is what it sounds, I wonder if anybody has experiences with this.
One of the reasons I came across deactivation/deletion matters was because I was looking whether it was possible to restrict one's profile to being visible only to friends as my newbie Facebook friend was getting worried about privacy. I told her that the Internet is the wrong place to be if one is after privacy, yet it seems that Facebook is flexible enough - it is possible to make one's profile/basic info/personal info/status updates/friends less accessible to the general lurker audience - even though one needs to research a bit on that as an average Joe 6 pack might not find it that easy.
On the other hand, I was wondering about the photos with me on other people's albums - these are out of my control. Vanishing nowadays has become quite complicated...
My conclusion so far is that there is plenty of gossip around about SNS, which is oftentimes based on customised settings, and the only way to come up with answers is to look for them.
I'm thinking whether I can convince my friend to come back... Not that Facebook is the love of my life, but I'd like to see my friend more often. At least on Facebook.
Previously I was told that disappearing from this social network site is not as easy as joining it and I was presuming that deletion of one's account is not possible. Deletion for users indeed is not possible. But deactivation is.
And you must love Facebook for the possible options given:
I don't feel safe on the site.
I spend too much time using Facebook.
I have another Facebook account.
This is temporary. I'll be back.
I need to fix something in my account.
I don't understand how to use the site.
I receive too many emails from Facebook.
I don't find Facebook useful.
Facebook is resulting in social drama for me.
Other [please explain further].
Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows to cancel the account and in that case the cancellation is irreversible.
So I had two news for my friend: firstly, she indeed became invisible. Yet, secondly, the traces were still there...
However, complete deletion of one's profile is possible, although one has to contact Facebook on that. Before that (and before the deactivation) it is requested to remove any profile content distributed on Facebook: sent and received messages, friends, comments/posts on all of your walls, comments/posts on other peoples walls, all your photos, you will have to leave all the networks and groups, transfer the admin rights to someone else, clear every last bit of information from your profile. Then contacting Facebook and if no traces are left - voila, you will be deleted. At least that is what it sounds, I wonder if anybody has experiences with this.
One of the reasons I came across deactivation/deletion matters was because I was looking whether it was possible to restrict one's profile to being visible only to friends as my newbie Facebook friend was getting worried about privacy. I told her that the Internet is the wrong place to be if one is after privacy, yet it seems that Facebook is flexible enough - it is possible to make one's profile/basic info/personal info/status updates/friends less accessible to the general lurker audience - even though one needs to research a bit on that as an average Joe 6 pack might not find it that easy.
On the other hand, I was wondering about the photos with me on other people's albums - these are out of my control. Vanishing nowadays has become quite complicated...
My conclusion so far is that there is plenty of gossip around about SNS, which is oftentimes based on customised settings, and the only way to come up with answers is to look for them.
I'm thinking whether I can convince my friend to come back... Not that Facebook is the love of my life, but I'd like to see my friend more often. At least on Facebook.
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2 Responses to "Facebook: deactivated, not deleted or contact the help desk"
http://britbohlinger.wordpress.com/
As for privacy issues, I think that many of the discourses evolving around the matters on new/social media should shift the emphasis from privacy issues and blame game as they could potentially trap us. Of course, privacy is pertinent and in my view many of the members of Facebook are not aware of the visibility customary settings allow to lurkers, but it seems to me that there's too much witch-hunt going on instead of efforts to trigger new discourses.
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