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Ask HN: Is Facebook secretly keeping accounts open?

37 points by hawkharris ↗ HN
I scheduled my account for permanent deletion five weeks ago. The process is supposed to take only two weeks. Yet my data is still there, and I was able to reactive the account.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

26 comments

[ 11.6 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] thread
simantel
I deleted my account six months ago or so and just tried to log in, which failed. Is it possible you just deactivated your account rather than scheduled it for deletion? Could another app have authenticated as you and reset your countdown?
aroch
I do believe if you (or an app you've linked) logs in to facebook during those two weeks, the timer resets. Make sure none of your mobile devices, browser plugins, and link-apps are doing so
mdhgriffiths
I deactivated last year for 4 months.. Then logged in and began exactly where I left off.
fallse7en
I've got a friend that had her account deleted for awhile and then logged into Spotify; apparently, Spotify silently reactivates Facebook accounts if you use the same email for both services.
askew
Had exactly the same happen - which was rather annoying. Spotify's loss was Rdio's gain.
pekk
They keep plenty of information on you even after the account is 'deleted' (not deactivated) - this much is evident from recommendations, etc. if you ever create a new account a year from now, showing up again as if it never went away

Facebook is private surveillance

junto
They also don't properly delete content that you choose to delete. Photos, check-ins and posts are just archived. I've been through and deleted everything manually on my timeline back to 2007. I noted that certain pages still showed the "counts" of content that had long been deleted:

- http://i.imgur.com/zdwTl.png

- http://i.imgur.com/27RFG.png

I can only assume that a Facebook developer missed the SELECT * FROM checkins WHERE userid = @param0 AND deleted_flag = 0. Deletes are UPDATE checkins SET deleted_flag = 1 WHERE checkinId = @param0.

That developer oversight showed me that Facebook were misusing the term "delete". Every since then I no longer post anything on Facebook. I just keep the account to lurk and use it for OAuth testing on my own apps.

andrewhillman
I just noticed FB makes it really tough to clear your Activity Log. Every search/action is stored and if you want to remove items you have to delete them one by one. Clearly this was an evil design decision. It's no value to them, if they can't use your activity log.
Ziomislaw
not only it is not deleted, people with no facebook accounts already have them. each time you visit a site with like button you are being tracked (see fb patent to track users with social buttons). information from that tracking is being saved into a "virtual" fb account, and if you ever make an account, the virtual one and your new one are being merged
AsymetricCom
HN secretly closes accounts so probably not an ideal place to ask.
PencilAndPaper
YUP. I created a fake account with a new name and email. IT figured out who I was pretty shortly. Dont know how, but there are many ways they could do this. For one, I added similar friends, and used a similar name.

Its the facial recognition that really creeps me out though, and the fact that cops always are recording cameras at community events and protests. Supplier meet consumer.

Dirlewanger
Why do people think the largest social network is going to make it so easy for them to delete their stuff? Your data is money to them. They don't give a crap about your privacy rights. Deleting/deactivating your account is doing nothing but making a tick in their database from visible to invisible.
alanh
> Why do people think the largest social network is going to make it so easy for them to delete their stuff?

Oh, I see you’re fond of the game “blame the victim.”

Facebook did not do what the OP was told they would do.

It’s worth debating whether we think we should have the right or ability to remove ourselves from FB at some point.

How are you helping by insinuating anyone who wants something other than the status quo is stupid or naive?

avallark
I think the only real solution to this is not to deny information to facebook, but to trivilize the information given to it. Fb already has all our data, now whether you delete it or not, they'll have it, either as visible data or as archives of back ups, they have it. What we should however do is what Adam Huxley suggested in brave new world that by filling in so much irrelevant information, you make it possible to drown out the valuable information.

I wont classify, I wont categorise and I won't tag, I will not create albums, I will just keep uploading everything everywhere. I will try face-detection with different people and my cat. You get the idea.

If enough people over use / abuse the fb with loads of insignificant info, FB's game will backfire.

lgsilver
FB's data structures are hugely messy and decentralized. There's so much information that even FB can't reliably delete all of it for an individual user. Instead, they erase or hash the IDs that represent you in the system, insuring that the links between your data and the front-end are broken.

The jobs that do this are scheduled, and every time you log in you create new IDs and nodes in the cache, which means they have to rerun the processes that erase the data. The delays are probably related to that.

kachhalimbu
I deactivated and scheduled to delete it (the option which was so well hidden that time) my account 3 yrs ago and created a new one but with same email account earlier this year. FB magically showed me all my 190 friends in the friend suggestions. I guess they never deleted any of my information.
true_religion
Friendship is a symetric relationship.

It could be the data that X email is/was friends with Y is data relevant to Y and thus retained even if X deletes all of his/her info.