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The question I'm more interested in is why a sane delete option isn't built into the service. On the other hand, it's at least clear that your account exists fo
by jon_black 13y ago
The question I'm more interested in is why a sane delete option isn't built into the service. On the other hand, it's at least clear that your account exists forever, although it would be better if people were aware of that during sign up. Twitter claims to have deleted my account, but I cannot verify it.
As a side note, amazon affiliate accounts are equally bad.
- ss64 13y agoPresumably if you have an account JohnSmith, that will be held locally on the computers of all your contacts, if the account was deleted and someone else registered a new JohnSmith account then your old contacts could end up calling a complete stranger. Microsoft could have some process that records dead accounts and automatically deletes them from the contact lists of the billions of computers running skype, but imagine the problems when someone deletes their account by mistake (or has it hijacked and deleted by a third party) and wants it restored. Now the better approach might be to associate each JohnSmith account with a unique ID that never gets recycled and then reject calls unless the account_IDs match. But that's probably a lot of re-engineering that they don't want to do.
- jon_black 13y agoI don't think the reason is to prevent accidental/destructive deletion. There are better ways to do that such as providing a grace period; allowing users to download their account data for a future re-signup; and two-factor authentication. It's more likely that the revenue earned by the service is heavily dependent on building a social profile. A properly deleted (without a trace) account reduces the profile accuracy. I also wouldn't rule out the almost too obvious government surveillance requirement.