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The fact that not only will Apple not delete the account, but also not do so much as flag it as potentially fraudulent blows me away. What positive purpose cou

The fact that not only will Apple not delete the account, but also not do so much as flag it as potentially fraudulent blows me away. What positive purpose could that possibly serve?

Natsu 15y ago
They might have only been able to hit a low level support rep who doesn't know anything. Hopefully, a story like this will get the attention of someone who can actually figure out what's going on here and do something.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
I'm just as puzzled by this. If a customer makes it clear that he wants to pack up and go, why wouldn't you just let him? It reminds me of the way Facebook treats its users. I've tried to get rid of an old account, and I found it's nigh impossible. The most a mere mortal can hope for is for the account to be put in hibernation mode -- but if you ever make the mistake of logging into the account ever again, bam! You're back. I've had the same Apple ID since the day iTools launched (in 2000), and I've never felt the need to cancel or delete an account, but I assumed they would let me! I see no good reason Apple would keep around every account that was ever created.
- corin_ 15y ago
  https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_a... It's been a while since I deleted my account, so can't remember how to get there (just found it in 30 seconds googling), and yes you do have to avoid logging in for x days (if I remember correctly it's either 30 or 90) before the deletion becomes permanent. But that's a long way from not being able to delete your account at all.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Oh, I've finally managed to do it, but it took way more effort than it should have, and I know that someone like my mom wouldn't be able to do it at all. Not interacting with Facebook sounds easy, but it's not. You have to clear the caches on every browser on any computer that you've ever logged into Facebook with. You have to delete all native Facebook clients. You can't log into any site that uses Facebook Connect. You can't accidentally click on a Facebook 'like' button. You can't respond to any mails Facebook sends you or click on a Facebook related link. Etc etc. If you so much as look in the direction of Facebook during the two weeks following your deletion request, it is canceled.
    - brudgers 15y ago
      That is why all my Facebook access happens in its very own dedicated Virtual Machine or on it's own dedicated SIMless smartphone over WiFi.
      - BiosElement 15y ago
        Don't forget the tinfoil hat.
    - tedunangst 15y ago
      Wait. If you delete your facebook account and then accidentally click a like button, you're just magically logged back in? It doesn't ask for your password?
      - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
        It does, but even if you don't fill in your password, you'll receive an email welcoming you back, canceling the account deletion request.
  - gcb 15y ago
    I created an account to stop the invites email after I've deleted it once. 5 or 6 months, and all my data was still there. After i deleted it again, 4mo later and it appeared deleted when i recreated. But 100% match on my 1st friend list and my 3rd installment of the account is weird
- BrandonMTurner 15y ago
  You really shouldn't be puzzled at this. It is actually pretty easy to explain if you have ever worked on a large scale website before. The problem is you begin to accrue large amounts of data and metadata (data about your data). And just "getting rid" of that data is actually hard at scale for a few reasons: 1) Lets say I post on your wall and then I delete my account. Does that mean the message should be removed from your wall? What if you really liked the conversation in the comments that took place after I posted the comment, you are just out of luck? This gets trickier and tricker to handle these types of problems as things like groups, forums, and tagging get added to the social network feature set. All of a sudden is very confusing and unclear what exactly should happen with this type of data. Let's say you do keep that message, when how much of the deleted account is required to keep alive to maintain your database relations (this assumes you are using a normalized relational database to manage your site). 2) The site I work on gets a lot of data from users. It isn't uncommon to have ~5MB from a single user in our database. The actual delete operation on that tables is really rough. If 4 users all tried to delete their account at the same time doing a straight DELETE on the tables would be horrible. Not to mention it leaves holes in your tables in some cases. 3) Is it actually legal to delete the data? Can Apple just delete an account where charges can be placed? I would think they need to keep a history of who used what credit card and so on. I am guessing that medical records and emails for large companies have some kind of restrictions about data retention. 4) The backup issue. If a user deletes their account, does the user expect that the company also goes through all their backups and delete their information from there as well. All of these things add up to a pretty big burden pretty quick and I think it is logical to see why companies might choose to not allow people to delete their own data. I can also understand why people disagree with that decision, but it really shouldn't be puzzling.
  - VikingCoder 15y ago
    It should be just as puzzling as any other security / privacy issue. No more, no less. If a website doesn't take security and privacy as high priority concerns, then they don't want me as a user. I hope to educate more people to feel the same as I do.
  - nknight 15y ago
- thematt 15y ago
  I won't defend Apple/Facebook, because I think it's nonsense, but here are a couple (technical) reasons why companies like that might justify keeping the account around: - Integration with other systems. It's easier to just mark the account record as "inactive" than it is to add functionality to remove it and any references to it from all the other systems. There can be a lot of cascading that would need to happen. - Auditing/Reporting. Perhaps legal or accounting feels the need to keep it around "just in case". Maybe they think they'll need to look up the history of the account one day or audit the activities of previous user at some point down the road.
RexRollman 15y ago
Actually, I think it is disturbing how many sites have no way to delete an unwanted account at all.
- epochwolf 15y ago
  It's not as easy as you think it is. I can remove a row from the user's table, but want do I do with everything that's attached to that record? Edit: BrandonMTurner has a better writeup http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3457973 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3457973
  - derefr 15y ago
    I think the issue here is that the word "delete" is being applied to two mostly-unrelated operations: removing users who no longer want to be part of the system/have been banned/etc., and removing accounts which were never operated by a human being at any point at all. The former is "hard", since even though you might not want the user around in the present, you usually want their history to persist. However, the latter case is comparatively simple. If a spambot posts on my wall, then yes, emphatically, delete that wall post when you delete the spambot. Delete any photos they uploaded. Nullify all their votes/likes/plus-ones/whatever. Make it so that the whole thing never happened, other than perhaps as a line in an abuse log. It is critical, though, that this should never happen automatically in a case where an automated account might be confused with a human one. It probably shouldn't even be exposed as part of a bulk "check off these accounts and purge" moderation view. But in cases where the automatedness of an individual account is out in the open and there's no contradictory evidence whatsoever, the "tactical-nuke" button could be a viable option. (Whether you can trust your community's moderators to not misuse this button is a whole 'nother can of worms.)
  - SideburnsOfDoom 15y ago
    It's really easy. Have a boolean flag called "deleted" or "defunct". if the bit is set, never display that account or allow it to log in. From the outside, it does not exist. But for referential integrity and other auditing, it does. This is pretty common.
smackfu 15y ago
It's the Apple philosophy: ignore edge cases, they aren't important and complicate life. In this case, the edge case is wanting to delete an account.

The fact that not only will Apple not delete the account, but also not do so much as flag it as potentially fraudulent blows me away. What positive purpose could that possibly serve?

Natsu 15y ago

They might have only been able to hit a low level support rep who doesn't know anything. Hopefully, a story like this will get the attention of someone who can actually figure out what's going on here and do something.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago

I'm just as puzzled by this. If a customer makes it clear that he wants to pack up and go, why wouldn't you just let him? It reminds me of the way Facebook treats its users. I've tried to get rid of an old account, and I found it's nigh impossible. The most a mere mortal can hope for is for the account to be put in hibernation mode -- but if you ever make the mistake of logging into the account ever again, bam! You're back. I've had the same Apple ID since the day iTools launched (in 2000), and I've never felt the need to cancel or delete an account, but I assumed they would let me! I see no good reason Apple would keep around every account that was ever created.

corin_ 15y ago
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_a... It's been a while since I deleted my account, so can't remember how to get there (just found it in 30 seconds googling), and yes you do have to avoid logging in for x days (if I remember correctly it's either 30 or 90) before the deletion becomes permanent. But that's a long way from not being able to delete your account at all.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  Oh, I've finally managed to do it, but it took way more effort than it should have, and I know that someone like my mom wouldn't be able to do it at all. Not interacting with Facebook sounds easy, but it's not. You have to clear the caches on every browser on any computer that you've ever logged into Facebook with. You have to delete all native Facebook clients. You can't log into any site that uses Facebook Connect. You can't accidentally click on a Facebook 'like' button. You can't respond to any mails Facebook sends you or click on a Facebook related link. Etc etc. If you so much as look in the direction of Facebook during the two weeks following your deletion request, it is canceled.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    That is why all my Facebook access happens in its very own dedicated Virtual Machine or on it's own dedicated SIMless smartphone over WiFi.
    - BiosElement 15y ago
      Don't forget the tinfoil hat.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    Wait. If you delete your facebook account and then accidentally click a like button, you're just magically logged back in? It doesn't ask for your password?
    - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
      It does, but even if you don't fill in your password, you'll receive an email welcoming you back, canceling the account deletion request.
- gcb 15y ago
  I created an account to stop the invites email after I've deleted it once. 5 or 6 months, and all my data was still there. After i deleted it again, 4mo later and it appeared deleted when i recreated. But 100% match on my 1st friend list and my 3rd installment of the account is weird
BrandonMTurner 15y ago
You really shouldn't be puzzled at this. It is actually pretty easy to explain if you have ever worked on a large scale website before. The problem is you begin to accrue large amounts of data and metadata (data about your data). And just "getting rid" of that data is actually hard at scale for a few reasons: 1) Lets say I post on your wall and then I delete my account. Does that mean the message should be removed from your wall? What if you really liked the conversation in the comments that took place after I posted the comment, you are just out of luck? This gets trickier and tricker to handle these types of problems as things like groups, forums, and tagging get added to the social network feature set. All of a sudden is very confusing and unclear what exactly should happen with this type of data. Let's say you do keep that message, when how much of the deleted account is required to keep alive to maintain your database relations (this assumes you are using a normalized relational database to manage your site). 2) The site I work on gets a lot of data from users. It isn't uncommon to have ~5MB from a single user in our database. The actual delete operation on that tables is really rough. If 4 users all tried to delete their account at the same time doing a straight DELETE on the tables would be horrible. Not to mention it leaves holes in your tables in some cases. 3) Is it actually legal to delete the data? Can Apple just delete an account where charges can be placed? I would think they need to keep a history of who used what credit card and so on. I am guessing that medical records and emails for large companies have some kind of restrictions about data retention. 4) The backup issue. If a user deletes their account, does the user expect that the company also goes through all their backups and delete their information from there as well. All of these things add up to a pretty big burden pretty quick and I think it is logical to see why companies might choose to not allow people to delete their own data. I can also understand why people disagree with that decision, but it really shouldn't be puzzling.
- VikingCoder 15y ago
  It should be just as puzzling as any other security / privacy issue. No more, no less. If a website doesn't take security and privacy as high priority concerns, then they don't want me as a user. I hope to educate more people to feel the same as I do.
- nknight 15y ago
thematt 15y ago
I won't defend Apple/Facebook, because I think it's nonsense, but here are a couple (technical) reasons why companies like that might justify keeping the account around: - Integration with other systems. It's easier to just mark the account record as "inactive" than it is to add functionality to remove it and any references to it from all the other systems. There can be a lot of cascading that would need to happen. - Auditing/Reporting. Perhaps legal or accounting feels the need to keep it around "just in case". Maybe they think they'll need to look up the history of the account one day or audit the activities of previous user at some point down the road.

RexRollman 15y ago

Actually, I think it is disturbing how many sites have no way to delete an unwanted account at all.

epochwolf 15y ago
It's not as easy as you think it is. I can remove a row from the user's table, but want do I do with everything that's attached to that record? Edit: BrandonMTurner has a better writeup http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3457973 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3457973
- derefr 15y ago
  I think the issue here is that the word "delete" is being applied to two mostly-unrelated operations: removing users who no longer want to be part of the system/have been banned/etc., and removing accounts which were never operated by a human being at any point at all. The former is "hard", since even though you might not want the user around in the present, you usually want their history to persist. However, the latter case is comparatively simple. If a spambot posts on my wall, then yes, emphatically, delete that wall post when you delete the spambot. Delete any photos they uploaded. Nullify all their votes/likes/plus-ones/whatever. Make it so that the whole thing never happened, other than perhaps as a line in an abuse log. It is critical, though, that this should never happen automatically in a case where an automated account might be confused with a human one. It probably shouldn't even be exposed as part of a bulk "check off these accounts and purge" moderation view. But in cases where the automatedness of an individual account is out in the open and there's no contradictory evidence whatsoever, the "tactical-nuke" button could be a viable option. (Whether you can trust your community's moderators to not misuse this button is a whole 'nother can of worms.)
- SideburnsOfDoom 15y ago
  It's really easy. Have a boolean flag called "deleted" or "defunct". if the bit is set, never display that account or allow it to log in. From the outside, it does not exist. But for referential integrity and other auditing, it does. This is pretty common.

smackfu 15y ago

It's the Apple philosophy: ignore edge cases, they aren't important and complicate life. In this case, the edge case is wanting to delete an account.