On Facebook, leaving is hard to do
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Are you a member of Facebook.com? You may have a lifetime contract.
Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off another round of concern over the popular social network's use of personal data.
While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.
"It's like the 'Hotel California,' " said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in New York who tried, unsuccessfully, to delete his account this fall. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
It took Das about two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook's customer service representatives, to erase most of his information from the site - which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Das's empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.
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In response to difficulties faced by ex-Facebook members, a cottage industry of unofficial help pages devoted to escaping Facebook has sprung up online - both outside and inside the network.
The technological hurdles set by Facebook have a business rationale: they allow ex-Facebookers who choose to return the ability to resurrect their accounts effortlessly.
According to an e-mail message from Amy Sezak, a spokeswoman for Facebook, "Deactivated accounts mean that a user can reactivate at any time and their information will be available again just as they left it."
But it also means that disenchanted users cannot disappear from the site without leaving footprints. Facebook's terms of use state, "You may remove your user content from the site at any time," but also add, "you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content." And its privacy policy says that after someone deactivates an account, "removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time."
Facebook's Web site does not inform departing users that they must physically delete information from their account in order to fully close it - meaning that they may unwittingly leave anything from e-mail addresses to credit card numbers sitting on Facebook servers. Only people who contact Facebook's customer service department are informed that they must painstakingly delete, line by line, all of the profile information, messages and group memberships they ever created within Facebook.
"Users can also have their account completely removed by deleting all of the data associated with their account and then deactivating it," Sezak said in her message. "Users can then write to Facebook to request their account be deleted and their e-mail will be completely erased from the database."
But even users who attempt to delete every piece of information they have ever written, sent or received via the network have found their efforts stymied to leave Facebook permanently. Other social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster, as well as online-dating sites like eHarmony.com, may require departing users to confirm their wishes several times - but in the end they offer a delete option.
"Most sites, even online dating sites, will give you an option to wipe your slate clean," Das said.
Das, who joined Facebook on a whim after receiving invitations from friends, tried to leave after realizing that most of his co-workers were also on the site. "I work in a small office," he said. "The last thing I want is people going on there and checking out my private life."
The stakes remain balanced between profit and alienating users for Facebook, which claims about 64 million users worldwide (MySpace has an estimated 110 million monthly active users). The network is still trying to find a way to monetize its popularity, mostly by allowing marketers access to its wealth of demographic and behavioral information. The retention of deactivated accounts on Facebook's servers seems like another attempt to hold on to as much demographic information as possible.
"The thing they offer advertisers is that they can connect to groups of people," said Alan Burlison, 46, a British software engineer who had trouble deleting his account. "I can see why they wouldn't want to throw away anyone's information, but there's a conflict with privacy."
Burlison succeeded in removing his account only after he complained to the British media, the British Information Commissioner's Office and the TrustE organization, an online privacy network that has certified Facebook.
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