How to check if Facebook really deleted my account after deactivation?

[ramik]

Two days ago, and after a lot of consideration, and after downloading the zip of my profile, I deactivated my Facebook account, and want everything deleted from Facebook servers.

Reading around, I found that Facebook leave the account data on their servers in case someone decide to come back, and the advice is not to have any interaction with Facebook for 14 days to have you account really deleted off the servers. but how can I be sure it is deleted after that time?

The problem is that I can't try to login, as when I do so, it signs in saying "Welcome back", and reactivates everything. What i expect is a message that my account is deactivated, and an option to enable or not, but this is not what happens.

Any ideas?

for the moment, to be sure that in no case i do activities related to facebook, i added Facebook urls in my windows "hosts" file to redirect them to 127.0.0.1, and deleted all cookies.....

[Subject Delta]

As you agree to their TOS when you sign up, legally you don't really have much recourse. Even if your data is on their servers, it won't be available to the public.

[ramik]

As i mentioned in my post in October, I deactivated my Facebook to have everything cancelled and removed from Facebook servers, but still they have my data:

I tried now to do a forgot my password, put only my username and they sent to 2 email addresses that were configured with my account the recover procedure to follow to reset my password..

WHAT CAN I DO TO HAVE MY ACCOUNT DEFINITIVELY REMOVED !?!

[Brandon]

As i mentioned in my post in October, I deactivated my Facebook to have everything cancelled and removed from Facebook servers, but still they have my data:

I tried now to do a forgot my password, put only my username and they sent to 2 email addresses that were configured with my account the recover procedure to follow to reset my password..

WHAT CAN I DO TO HAVE MY ACCOUNT DEFINITIVELY REMOVED !?!

You can't. Plain and simple.

[Roger H. Veteran]

As i mentioned in my post in October, I deactivated my Facebook to have everything cancelled and removed from Facebook servers, but still they have my data:

I tried now to do a forgot my password, put only my username and they sent to 2 email addresses that were configured with my account the recover procedure to follow to reset my password..

WHAT CAN I DO TO HAVE MY ACCOUNT DEFINITIVELY REMOVED !?!

You can't really, anything you upload to facebook becomes part of their property. It's in the ToS so check that next time before clicking I agree.

They say they will try to delete your data but obviously tags and other such information will remain even though it may not be linked back to your original account. I think your comments are deleted as well however?

[Teebor]

Have you tried the obvious thing and contacted Facebook?

[firey]

why do you care so much? Just stop visiting the site, and stop worrying about it. If you aren't active.. you aren't accepting friends.. if you were smart you locked down your account so anything people could see was blocked. It doesn't need to be removed off the face of the earth.

[StevenNT]

Follow this link and after about 14 days it should delete the account. https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

[mulligan2k]

As i mentioned in my post in October, I deactivated my Facebook to have everything cancelled and removed from Facebook servers, but still they have my data:

I tried now to do a forgot my password, put only my username and they sent to 2 email addresses that were configured with my account the recover procedure to follow to reset my password..

WHAT CAN I DO TO HAVE MY ACCOUNT DEFINITIVELY REMOVED !?!

why dont you re-activate your account, change all your data to new false values (i.e. change your name to steve smith, 123 fake street, etc) then de-activate it again

if your really worried, change your email to a brand new one, just make a new gmail or hotmail account for this purpose

[Brandon]

I'm going to take a gander and say their database can not work like that.

Imagine if you could actually delete your account, removing all of your photos, comments etc. It wouldn't just effect you. It would effect your friends who you tagged in those photos, the comments you left on other people's walls, pictures and statuses. It would be like a virus, almost.

You may be able to remove your profile, but the pictures and such, I don't think you can

[Jen Smith]

You can't. Plain and simple.

You can, but it's very well hidden. Plus they make it sit on their server for a few weeks, because [sarcasm]it takes a huge datacenter a long time to delete records out of a database.[/sarcasm]

As far as checking goes, just make a bogus account. If you try and log in to your "delete pending" account, it'll automatically reactivate it again, making you start the wait cycle over again.

As for why, why not. It's the person's personal information, not Facebook property, TOS be damned. (If they own it, they can pay my f'ing mortgage.) If they wan't it removed, that's their right. They have serious issues respecting people's privacy,you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to delete your own data.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

Facebook can hold your data up to 2 months afaik, so it's best to simply change your password to some random generated value, and never log back in.

[KM.]

If you were in the UK you could hit them with a Data Protection request. Does Italy have anything similar?

[episode]

I'm going to take a gander and say their database can not work like that.

Imagine if you could actually delete your account, removing all of your photos, comments etc. It wouldn't just effect you. It would effect your friends who you tagged in those photos, the comments you left on other people's walls, pictures and statuses. It would be like a virus, almost.

You may be able to remove your profile, but the pictures and such, I don't think you can

You can delete anything you personally added on your profile. Or anything others added on your profile. You cannot edit/delete things others added, or your comments/posts/pictures that you have posted on others profiles/walls.

[pixelpixel]

Sign back in and manually remove all your information, posts, pictures and anything else. Now deactivate your account again and your done. Also set your account privacy settings to only you and hide yourself from any search.

[SuperKid]

I'm going to take a gander and say their database can not work like that.

Imagine if you could actually delete your account, removing all of your photos, comments etc. It wouldn't just effect you. It would effect your friends who you tagged in those photos, the comments you left on other people's walls, pictures and statuses. It would be like a virus, almost.

You may be able to remove your profile, but the pictures and such, I don't think you can

It does work like that because you can delete photos, comments etc yourself. I think if you delete your account with that link above ^ it removes your photos and any comments you made or inboxes your name will change to "Facebook User" and any posts you was tagged in your name won't be linked to the profile, just plain text.

[Chado2423]

Personally I don't believe that Facebook gets rid of everything after deletion.  That seems like a time-waster. And it just isn't a viable way for a database of their calliber ti work. So, I believe this to be a smokescreen to the user. In short, they lie. So, to answer the actual question: in my opinion, you can't. Whatever information you posted will be tucked away somewhere. Yeah, it's not fair. Yes, it's legal. Does Facebook care about the ethics of maintaining a user's dat a after they deleted their account? Not really. They are social manipulators, not productI've advetisers. Don't believe me. Think about when you went to deactivate the account? Immediately you were posed with a peer pressure emotional ploy, an attempt to exploit your emotions to keep you on Facebook,     "(these) friends will miss you." 

 

This is terrible. I've heard better peer pressure from my drunk uncle. Get real. Facebook is essentially an internet parasite. Can you make sure Facebook Deleted your data? I don't think so. Do they care? I don't think so.  They essentiallyare Data collectors, and not compensating the people who give their data away for free to Facebook to use as Facebook sees fit.  So, imho, you and I probably should stay off Facebook as long as possible

[Chado2423]

On Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:00 AM, pixelpixel said:

Sign back in and manually remove all your information, posts, pictures and anything else. Now deactivate your account again and your done. Also set your account privacy settings to only you and hide yourself from any search.

Bad idea. This will restart the account and totally be contrary to what this person is attempting to do. Cold Turkey is the way to go.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

47 minutes ago, Chado2423 said:

Bad idea. This will restart the account and totally be contrary to what this person is attempting to do. Cold Turkey is the way to go.

That or don't use it...

 

Edit: Thread jump, sorry, didn't notice...