7 ms·

To be completely fair, internet industry as a whole is hell bent on keeping users in, rather than letting them delete their accounts. The other day, I was tryin

by gnufied 11y ago

To be completely fair, internet industry as a whole is hell bent on keeping users in, rather than letting them delete their accounts. The other day, I was trying to delete my Steam account and I couldn't find a way to do that and Valve happens to be one of the most respectable company on earth. I don't know what will change attitude of our industry. I guess lot of us are still stuck with mindset of real-world brick/mortor shops - if you don't want do anything with Shop X just don't go there! Sadly this does not really work for loads of internet services. Perhaps we need a legislation like Right to Forget (I am not endorsing EU law fwiw).

SXX 11y ago
Let's say fair you shouldn't expect to have account removal on Steam because it's would be abused as hell: family conflicts, script kiddies, "friends" "jokes", etc.
- akshatpradhan 11y ago
  We shouldn't expect the ability for Steam to honor a request to remove our accounts because that ability could be abused by family conflicts, friends and jokes?
  - SXX 11y ago
    Yes because it's nearly impossible to check if it's actually you request removal and not somebody else. Otherwise Steam would have to keep your account data on servers anyway so there is no point in removal procedure. Considering Steam don't ask about any of your personal information (and you can pay using PayPal or even "offline" wallet codes) I would suspect that such feature will be used more for harm than good.
    - gnufied 11y ago
      Wait, why do we need special requests for Steam account removal? I would login and delete my account (and as a result immediately logged out I suppose). Steam uses two factor authentication for login and unless someone has got hold of your Steam password and email password, you should be safe.
      - pjc50 11y ago
        And what happens when you want to undelete your account, because it was deleted by someone else who had access to your computer? (This will happen) Would deleting an account enable the associated Steam keys (physical or electronic) to be reused? Or is deleting an account equivalent to putting all your games in a pile and burning them?
      - SXX 11y ago
        Two-factor authentication with email doesn't actually help to average user at all. When Steam account password is stolen then email password is likely too.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Valve is known for asking for PII for things such as recovering accounts that have been hacked (to wit: fax in your driver's license or other photo id and a physical CD key from one of your registered games)
      - SXX 11y ago
        In same time Steam support accounts are completely independent from Steam store accounts. Anyway my point is: Steam is not dating website or social network that collect tons of your personal information. By not having account deletion procedure they don't hurt anyone's privacy, but just save average user from one more possible pain in ass for no reason (because they wouldn't be able to delete accounts for real anyway).
        gnufied 11y ago
        For majority of users who use any kind of ingame purchase (dota, TF2 hats) - Steam stores credit card information etc. I know one can pay using Paypal but I dunno how many users use that option. So, Steam does store personal information of users period. It is not very different from any other service. On other hand, allowing users to delete their accounts can help with kicking serious gaming addiction. It usually takes time before you can level up a new account for playing at skill levels you were. Part of me thinks, Valve does not allow deletion of accounts precisely because of this.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Nah. Valve only runs two games that meet that description, TF2 and DOTA2, and "resetting your progress" is as easy as burning all your items.
        SXX 11y ago
        Saving of credit card information is optional on and it's can be removed with one click. There no big difference between trust service that it's going to remove this data or whole account. And idea that some people going to remove somebody else account to "help with gaming addition" is good reason to not implement removal.
Symmetry 11y ago
That's one of the things I really like about Google, that they have a team that's explicitly working to make it easier to take your data out and move to a different service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front
- pjc50 11y ago
  .. and delete it from Google afterwards?
  - bitJericho 11y ago
    Not in a million years
  - myko 11y ago
    Yes, of course, that is a major goal of Google's DLF. http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-dataliberationorg-liberate.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-d... http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/ http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/
    - pjc50 11y ago
      I can't find on either of those pages specific text relating to deletion?
      - myko 11y ago
        "Said simply, a liberated product is one which has built-in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you'd like to take it elsewhere" "For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity."

by gnufied 11y ago

SXX 11y ago

Let's say fair you shouldn't expect to have account removal on Steam because it's would be abused as hell: family conflicts, script kiddies, "friends" "jokes", etc.

akshatpradhan 11y ago
We shouldn't expect the ability for Steam to honor a request to remove our accounts because that ability could be abused by family conflicts, friends and jokes?
- SXX 11y ago
  Yes because it's nearly impossible to check if it's actually you request removal and not somebody else. Otherwise Steam would have to keep your account data on servers anyway so there is no point in removal procedure. Considering Steam don't ask about any of your personal information (and you can pay using PayPal or even "offline" wallet codes) I would suspect that such feature will be used more for harm than good.
  - gnufied 11y ago
    Wait, why do we need special requests for Steam account removal? I would login and delete my account (and as a result immediately logged out I suppose). Steam uses two factor authentication for login and unless someone has got hold of your Steam password and email password, you should be safe.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      And what happens when you want to undelete your account, because it was deleted by someone else who had access to your computer? (This will happen) Would deleting an account enable the associated Steam keys (physical or electronic) to be reused? Or is deleting an account equivalent to putting all your games in a pile and burning them?
    - SXX 11y ago
      Two-factor authentication with email doesn't actually help to average user at all. When Steam account password is stolen then email password is likely too.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Valve is known for asking for PII for things such as recovering accounts that have been hacked (to wit: fax in your driver's license or other photo id and a physical CD key from one of your registered games)
    - SXX 11y ago
      In same time Steam support accounts are completely independent from Steam store accounts. Anyway my point is: Steam is not dating website or social network that collect tons of your personal information. By not having account deletion procedure they don't hurt anyone's privacy, but just save average user from one more possible pain in ass for no reason (because they wouldn't be able to delete accounts for real anyway).
      - gnufied 11y ago
        For majority of users who use any kind of ingame purchase (dota, TF2 hats) - Steam stores credit card information etc. I know one can pay using Paypal but I dunno how many users use that option. So, Steam does store personal information of users period. It is not very different from any other service. On other hand, allowing users to delete their accounts can help with kicking serious gaming addiction. It usually takes time before you can level up a new account for playing at skill levels you were. Part of me thinks, Valve does not allow deletion of accounts precisely because of this.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Nah. Valve only runs two games that meet that description, TF2 and DOTA2, and "resetting your progress" is as easy as burning all your items.
        SXX 11y ago
        Saving of credit card information is optional on and it's can be removed with one click. There no big difference between trust service that it's going to remove this data or whole account. And idea that some people going to remove somebody else account to "help with gaming addition" is good reason to not implement removal.

Symmetry 11y ago

That's one of the things I really like about Google, that they have a team that's explicitly working to make it easier to take your data out and move to a different service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front

pjc50 11y ago
.. and delete it from Google afterwards?
- bitJericho 11y ago
  Not in a million years
- myko 11y ago
  Yes, of course, that is a major goal of Google's DLF. http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-dataliberationorg-liberate.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-d... http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/ http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/
  - pjc50 11y ago
    I can't find on either of those pages specific text relating to deletion?
    - myko 11y ago
      "Said simply, a liberated product is one which has built-in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you'd like to take it elsewhere" "For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity."