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Just Delete Me
- miguelrochefort 13y agoWhy do people expect data about themselves to magically disappear from the Internet? One should always assume that everything you communicate online (explicitly or not) has the potential to exist forever.
- Argorak 13y agoBecause we are talking about proper legal entities here. If I want my data deleted, they should have the means an the will to do so. Nothing "magical" at all. It is not as if I am asking "the internet" to delete my stuff, but "facebook", "google" or "okcupid".
- miguelrochefort 13y agoIf they agreed that they would delete everything they know about you at your request, sure. But most of them don't, which means you can't do anything. Companies should not be forced to implement ways to delete data about users. That's just silly. Why do you want them to delete the data anyway? To me, it sounds silly and looks like some kind of censorship. Embrace transparency and live with the fact that what is public remains public.
- rmc 13y agoWell soon it might be law. The EU Data Protection reform is include requiring organisations that keep personal data to allow the user to delete them.
- ggchappell 13y agoOne sentence here is curious: > JustDelete.Me is a directory of urls to delete your account from web services. (Yes, I am aware how terrible that description is. If you’ve got a better one, let me know). Sounds like a fine description to me. (It's certainly better than average. I find the descriptions of about half of the "take a look at this site" posts on HN to be incomprehensible; it's nice to be able to read a post like this and immediately know what it is talking about.) So, is something wrong with this description? If so, can anyone tell me what the problem is?
- signed0 13y agoHere's a screenshot, the server seems to be overloaded. http://i.imgur.com/1e5XzWc.png http://i.imgur.com/1e5XzWc.png
- RossM 13y agoIn case the blog goes down again, the link to the site concerned: http://justdelete.me/ http://justdelete.me/
- pyxy 13y agohttp://www.deleteyouraccount.com/ http://www.deleteyouraccount.com/
- hugoroy 13y agoand http://www.accountkiller.com/ http://www.accountkiller.com/
- 9emE0iL18gxCqLT 13y agoOther similar sites: http://www.accountkiller.com/en/ http://www.accountkiller.com/en/ && http://tosdr.org http://tosdr.org
- murtza 13y agoI run a similar website called WikiCancel. http://wikicancel.org/ http://wikicancel.org/
- gcatalfamo 13y agonice execution!
- slg 13y agoIt isn't really feasible for a service like this, but it would be interesting to know what each of these sites do with your data once your account is deleted. Facebook has recently come under fire for their ghost profiles and I can't imagine they are the only company that keeps data on people who aren't official users.
- andrew_gardener 13y agoI second this. Maybe they could add an extra note detailing any know user data retained by the service (at least as far as the general public knows)
- rmlewisuk 13y agoWe are looking at adding more information such as data retention, etc.
- slg 13y agoThat sounds great. The only problem is that you just have to accept the word of whatever PR person you talk to at these companies. Not that I really expect them to flat out lie to you, but I wouldn't necessarily expect the whole and complete truth either.
- pc86 13y agoAre data retention policies generally in a site's TOS? Not that that'd be much better than a PR rep, but it'd be easier to get at least.
- hugoroy 13y agoHm. Do you really want to do that on your own? You'd have to find the ToS, document ToS changes, analyse the ToS, etc. We're trying to do that already at http://tosdr.org http://tosdr.org, please join in (http://github.com/tosdr http://github.com/tosdr) and http://tosback.org http://tosback.org Edit: Hm I thought 5apps supported https already, i guess i was wrong
- rmlewisuk 13y agoWe're doing everything we can to keep the site up. As said below, the direct link to the site is http://justdelete.me http://justdelete.me
- cloudwalking 13y agoIs this site not completely static?
- cremnob 13y agoCan you delete a HN account?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ngoel36 13y agoFalse. From the FAQ: In my profile, what does showdead do? If you turn it on, you'll see all the submissions and comments that have been killed by the editors. They're mostly spam and duplicates.
- 9emE0iL18gxCqLT 13y agoI don't see how doing that deletes your account or your data for that matter. From what I understand it just shows you content that was 'supposedly' deleted but in fact it was just hidden.
- pc86 13y agoWhich is not at all a way to delete your own account, and proof that even spam and duplicate accounts are not actually deleted.
- AgentConundrum 13y agoI think that's what he's saying. There's a deleted post above him. I think the comment you're replying to is saying the same thing you are.
- ngoel36 13y agoAh the comment I was replying to was deleted :-/. The comment suggested to use 'showdead', that's what I claimed to be false..
- 9emE0iL18gxCqLT 13y agoNo. You can't delete a Hacker News account: http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-hacker-news-account http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-hacker-news-account
- richardkiss 13y ago> JustDelete.Me is a directory of urls to delete your account from web services. (Yes, I am aware how terrible that description is. If you’ve got a better one, let me know). How about a variation of "Helping you delete your web accounts"
- przemoc 13y agoGood idea! And don't worry about the name and description, because they're spot on.
- albeertoni 13y agoNext step: form letters that make a formal request for the deletion of all information related to you. Won't work either but, like this, it's a nice start.
- dredmorbius 13y agoThere used to be a feature rather much like that on the (now defunct) Internet Junkbuster site. A pretty simple set of form letters you could automatically fill out and have submitted to the major credit bureaus, marketing agencies, and the (then) handful of companies which maintained active marketing lists. I printed and mailed a small sheaf of letters based on this during the summer of 2001. A month or so later, 9/11 hit, followed by the anthrax mailing scare. I was rather happy to have had far less junk mail to sort through, given the mood of the times -- every piece of mail not received was one more bit of dread avoided. The results of that persisted for years. I've also avoided using permanent change-of-address forms from the USPS (the data from that is used to, you guessed it, update marketing lists). Having dropped use of credit cards, I've had no credit report for years (occasionally a minor hassle, but actually somewhat nice), and what data does exist is a very jumbled scramble of mostly highly outdated addresses and locations. I prefer it that way.
- olegp 13y ago@rmlewisuk Are you OK with us including this data and a link back to your site in our web app directory at https://starthq.com https://starthq.com? Edit: Also, you should try to collaborate with the TOSDR guys, they have a pretty active IRC channel: #tosdr on Freenode.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- narcissus 13y agoEvery time I see these sorts of sites, I just pine even more for the return of ioptout.ca... Either way, good job!
- d0m 13y ago"Make it easy to definitely delete your account from web services."
- mthoms 13y agoSuggested site to add: nsa.gov
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pacifi30 13y agoAdd all the dating websites as well, they are notorious to not providing an option to delete your account. Here is the list that I complied in my blog, I posted on hacker news yesterday http://nishant.posthaven.com/why-i-cant-delete-my-dating-account http://nishant.posthaven.com/why-i-cant-delete-my-dating-acc... eharmony -> only cancel membership match -> only cancel membership coffee meet bagel -> only cancel membership truffle -> delete accounts okcupid -> will delete account
- ChristianMarks 13y agoTopsy appears to offer a data deletion service at accountremoval@topsy.com. Try asking them to delete their online archive of a defunct G+ account. (Defunct means that the G+ account and its content is deleted.) The service autoresponds to your email entreaty, but nothing is deleted. I have been emailing them for two weeks. The reply is the same: Re: Please delete my G+ content. I have deleted my G+ account Topsy Support | AUG 18, 2013 | 09:22PM UTC Thank you for submitting your request. We have received your request and are working on responding to you as soon as possible. If you have any additional information to add to this case, please reply to this email.
- newman314 13y agoTopsy is fking evil. They have been gaming SERPs for quite a while now. I would lump them in the same category as Pipl, Spokeo etc.
- donniezazen 13y agoI find it extremely frustrating that services like Gravatar and forums didn't inform me that I won't be able to wipe clean my account. It is not acceptable.
- pgeorgi 13y agoEspecially gravatar which is capable of building a profile across every website that uses them without caching avatar images locally. Even for non-users, even retroactively. There's a reason why I add some "+semirandomstring" to the userpart of my email address when writing comments (and hope that "helpful" services don't strip it out before md5'ing it for gravatar).
- AhtiK 13y agoI wish to see a similar site made for changing passwords. One use case is when the password storage is compromised but also helps when you grow more paranoid over time and need to rotate and max out the passwords.
- jfoutz 13y agoBlizzard is challenging too.
- Torn 13y agoI'd love to find out how to delete a bitstamp account, there's no links on their site.
- webwanderings 13y agoNo AOL? It is a pain to delete AOL account.
- cedel2k1 13y agoPlease cover ICQ here :-)
- simonswords82 13y agoBlimey I didn't know anybody still used ICQ!!
- liquidcool 13y agoWhat's concerning about companies that don't delete user info is that they don't consider it a liability, or don't believe they can be hacked. If people tell you to delete their PII and you don't, then lose it, isn't that a lawsuit waiting to happen?
- dictum 13y ago>Skype: Contact customer services. You’ll need to know 5 contacts from your contacts list, the month you created your account, and your signup email address. Why do I get the feeling asking Skype to cancel your account immediately puts you into a special watchlist?
- dredmorbius 13y agoGiven the negative consequences (DoS) of an unauthorized account deactivation, this is actually a fairly reasonable protocol. The challenge of electronic services is in identifying your customers. Especially when you're doing something allegedly on their behalf. Double-especially when that has permanent state/data loss consequences.
- wodenokoto 13y agoWho the hell knows which month they signed up? I signed up over 6 years ago. I think it is unfair to expect people to save their original email confirmation mail for upwards to 10 years (skype was released in 2003), especially given that nowhere in the mail it says that this is really important to keep.
- dredmorbius 13y agoI can top that. A good friend's AOL email account was compromised. They'd been AOL customers (paid) for years, though when the email service went free, they discontinued payment and got broadband service from another provider. AOL insisted that they give the credit card number that had been associated with the account. A card which hadn't been used and hadn't existed for years. Needless to say, it wasn't available. For all I know, that email account is still active and valid, though hopefully no critical information is being sent to it. Again: figuring out how to identify your true customer (or user) is hard.
- skue 13y agoI canceled my account a week ago, and it wasn't nearly that simple. They paid an agent almost an hour's wage to make it as difficult as possible to delete my account. The agent kept asking me for personal data such as my birthdate and half the digits of my credit card number. I refused repeatedly (I never recall giving Skype my birthdate in the first place). Eventually after 55 minutes of discussion, the agent agreed to delete my account if I could provide them 5 of my contacts, the amount of my last bill, and my contact email. Even though you have to be logged in to speak to an agent, and all of these things are fully visible on their website once you are logged in.
- nileshtrivedi 13y agoQuora gives me a link to "deactivate" my account but wants me to write a mail to privacy@quora.com for "deleting" my account. Others have reported that the requests sent to this email address are not fulfilled, neither are the mails even replied to. I want to know the names of assholes in charge of this company so that I can avoid ever working with them.
- devcpp 13y agoQuora uses a massive amount of dark patterns. They are huge gaping assholes. I bet they even have a counter-UX engineer whose role is just to design users to enter as much info as possible and never leave the website.
- gtirloni 13y agoI got my account deleted just fine by emailing them. Have you tried?
- michaelt 13y agoI e-mailed them, then waited a few months, then e-mailed them again, then went through the site manually blanking my answers then deleting them (surprise, the 'delete' button just hides your answer), and only then did I get an e-mail back saying my account had been deleted. I agree with nileshtrivedi these Quora guys seem like assholes - that's why I decided to delete my account in the first place.
- prajit 13y agoType in the Konami Code and see what happens (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a) - an Easter Egg!
- wodenokoto 13y agoGiven that netflix offers 1 month free subscription, I kinda get why they won't delete accounts completely. Else people could just sign up, delete and sign up again for free netflix.
- rmc 13y agoCan't wait for that EU data protection law to come in that will require services to have a delete option. Self-regulation, as this list shows, isn't working.