Comment:
Is social networking a waste of time?
Could the party be over for the big social networks such as Facebook, MySpace
and Bebo? Last month it emerged Facebook had suffered a 5% drop in members
since December, according to Nielsen Online, the web analyst.
Potentially more damaging, though, is that the average amount of time users
spent tinkering on all three of the big networks has also fallen in the
period from last November to January 2008 compared with the three months
prior to that. And in the case of Bebo, which was bought last week by AOL
for £425m, this drop was by 25%.
Presumably, many people have grown weary of being contacted by complete
strangers, invited to join wacky-sounding groups or asked to play silly
vampire-bite games where you receive points for the number of strangers you
can “infect”.
More serious, perhaps, is the growing realisation that if you ever find
yourself in the news, embarrassing photos posted on social networking sites
could soon be spread all over the media. Remember the picture of Italian
murder suspect Amanda Knox – Foxy Knoxy – and the machinegun, or the
partying sons of Derek Conway, the disgraced Tory MP? But jumping off the
good ship Facebook is not as easy as you might think. To find out, I
registered as Ian Gear on Facebook and MySpace (which is owned by News
Corporation, parent company of The Sunday Times) and then tried to extricate
myself permanently from both networks.
On the MySpace site the process was straightforward other than that the
correct link takes a few minutes to find. If you to try to delete yourself
from Facebook, however, you will find that the default option is actually to
“deactivate” your account.
Rather than removing your personal details (and photos) from the system, this
option will merely take down your public profile, purportedly so that you
can later return to the Facebook fold without having to reupload all your
information.
Meanwhile, all your personal details are still stored and potentially
accessible. They are certainly out of your hands. This is what happened to
Steve Powell, 37, who runs Hoffi barber’s shop in the City of London. “I set
up my Facebook page about two years ago to keep in touch with my clients,
but mainly because I’m a gossip-monger. People would tell me harmless
secrets and I’d post them on my page for fun.”
All was intended to be kept among a close-knit circle. The problem began, says
Powell, when he inadvertently let one of the many people who had asked to be
his Facebook friend into the circle of trust. “Soon the whole City knew the
details of an affair one of my clients was having from jokes that I’d posted
– thank God his wife didn’t find out.”
By December Powell had had enough and decided to bale out, but he found it
strange that Facebook didn’t offer him the option to delete his account,
only to deactivate it. “Knowing that all my gossip is still out there
somewhere has been really unnerving ever since. Is there a secret button?”
asks Powell.
The situation was exposed by Alan Burlison, a software programmer, when he
tried to leave Facebook last November. He was determined to properly delete
his profile, only to be told he must manually remove every individual action
he had undertaken on the site – a process so arduous it was soon dubbed
“Hotel California” by disgruntled former fans, referring to the line in the
Eagles song that says you can check out but you can never leave.
“I wrote back to Facebook, saying that their response was unacceptable,” says
Burlison on his personal blog. He also complained to the Information
Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – the body responsible for upholding the Data
Protection Act in the UK – and even Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief
executive. “The e-mail didn’t bounce, so I must have guessed his addresses
correctly,” he adds.
Eventually the website expunged Burlison’s details properly, but he had posed
the highly pertinent question: if Facebook has the ability to delete
accounts so easily, why doesn’t it make it available to users?
Magnus Wallin, a Swedish Facebooker, set up a website campaign called “How to
permanently delete your Facebook account”, which has 12,414 members.
In response to this kind of pressure, Facebook has since created a customer
service form that users can fill in to request full deletion. Wallin told
The Sunday Times that this new form was “a decent first step, but it’s
hidden deep in the help pages. The option to delete yourself should be
available right next to the ‘deactivate’ button on the website. And why a
form? You shouldn’t need to explain yourself”.
He’s right, of course, and I only found this form at all because Wallin provides
a link on his Facebook page.
When I tried to delete the fictional Ian Gear’s account by filling in the
form, it took several days – and this account had only a few details to
remove. Wallin insists that despite a few teething problems the process does
now work. “Your complete profile is removed without a trace. The only things
that are left are personal messages you’ve sent to other Facebook members if
they still have them in their inbox.”
Facebook says it takes seriously its responsibility for holding people’s data
and is in compliance with key tenets of European Union law. The reality,
though, is that the company is in talks with the ICO over the practicalities
of this and there is a strong possibility that by uploading your personal
data to Facebook you kiss goodbye to any legal rights to have them deleted
later.
As a US-based company it is unclear whether Facebook has to comply with EU or
UK data-protection laws, which require all personal data to be destroyed
after the purpose they are used for is completed.
Facebook does participate in the privacy programme operated by the US-based
Truste, a self-regulated body that deals with oversights arising from such
matters, and the Safe Harbor initiative – an exemption that allows
multinational firms to transfer data about EU-based employees to the US.
This is not good enough, according to Yaman Akdeniz, director of Cyber-Rights &
Cyber-Liberties, a UK-based pressure group, and a law lecturer at Leeds
University. “Although the ICO has good intentions, this falls short of legal
compliance as Facebook is currently not listed as a data controller within
the UK – and as it has 8.5m British users it should be.”
The ICO confirmed it has not received a formal application (a process known as
notification) from Facebook to be an authorised data controller, despite
verbal assurances from the company that it is in the process of doing so.
The way out
If you visit the account section of Facebook you are offered only the
opportunity to “deactivate”. This merely hides your public profile until you
next log in. It’s a useful option if you are likely to return. To delete
your details permanently you must first unearth the anonymous-looking
customer service form that is hidden away at tinyurl.com/2xv52v.
When completing this form tell Facebook in both the subject and the message
fields that you wish to have your account deleted. To check if this has been
done properly either create a fake Facebook account or ask a friend to
search for your details a few days later.
Interesting enough. I have stopped social networking a while ever since I fell in the hands of identity theft and I have no idea how. I'm not even 20 years old yet. Recently, I tried to remove accounts that I use my name with, for example something like "MyNameIsJoey45". I was able to close my Facebook and Myspace account with their form, now I'm not sure if it really went through though. Then now I'm having trouble asking TechSpot removing my account. They told me my excuse for account removal wasn't good enough and that their executive editor wouldn't like people removing their accounts. Ridiculous enough, I find that selfish and now I am seriously fed up signing up with sites with nooo consideration to their members and try to dictate peoples' lives everyday.
Jihan, Brooklyn,
This report comes to no surprise.
Having had joined Facebook a year ago due to peer pressure I have witnessed a friend being sacked from work because of fabricated rumours posted about him.
My housemate had her reputation destroyed when fake photoshopped images of her were circulated and offensive groups were made.
I myself have actually been stalked, the guy used my friend's accounts to view my profile and follow conversations and befriend those on my list to get my details. Fortunatly he has been deported to his home country.
But still I would never join one of these sites again.
Helen , Nottingham,
I used to chuckle at my friends that refused to get an account with one of these sites because they were sure they are government controlled. Now I just sit back and wonder...
Lydia, New Haven, CT, USA
They may delete your data from the database.. but what about the backups?
Foo, London,
Just the sort of thing that shakes one's faith in these sites and their objectives, declared or otherwise. Its surprising how much information a user is willing to disclose without once wondering why or even what might happen in cases where one's want's to disappear without a trace. Alas! isnt all that easy as it transpires. But regulatory bodies ought to energetically pursue such cases where networking sites act funny when one wants to delete one's account.
Bharadwaj, Pune,
You can allways get yourself baned on purpose!
Robert, Ljubljana, Slovenia
I got so fed up with facebook, I keep in touch with people I want to keep in touch with the good old fashioned way. The only network I am a member of now are ones where I can be anonymous like www.bigwhitewall.com - much more socially healthy!
Clare, London, UK
Social networking has moved on so far since Facebook, Myspavce, etc was launched- you only have to look at sites such as Next2friends who now b lend the online and the mobile worlds together. Using your mobile handset to stream video in realtime and blue tooth tagging to actually meet people with the same interests as you close by rather than the other side of the planet. I really do feel users want, demand and deserve much more than just a static on line experience, so why not use your mobile to do much more.
Roy Shelton, Nottingham, UK
This is precisely why I never joined any of these sites.
And I was predicting confidently a year ago that they would not be long term crazes. Crazes never are.
I do think that sites like Facebook will continue to exist for quite some time, but I also think it likely that each generation of school leavers will be using a different site (i.e. whichever is most fashionable at the time).
Very much similar to Friends reunited. Hugely successful and mega hyped by the press, used by everyone, almost daily it seemed. Now? I check on old friends once a year maybe.
Pete, Bristol, UK
As someone who works in the online community sector, its clear to me that youve missed another angle here. Its standard practises for every online business with members to not automatically delete an account on request, but to make the process more long winded, because if it was that easy - a hacker to set up a virus that would systematically delete accounts and therefore quickly destroy on-line businesses. additionally any other person whos sussed out your passsword could permanently delete you too. What about all those family photos you might have wanted to keep? It has to be hard to destroy online information, otherwise, its far too dangerous both to the businesses who need security, and to the individual whos info is important. There are no more sinister reasons than that for making the process more complicated.
Luke, Nottingham, UK
Potentially embarrassing ?
Benzo, Nr Chelmsford,
Hotmail has the same problem! In fact, Microsoft blatantly says that you can't delete your account (!!!) -- and even deactivation happens after no usage for at least 4 months. There is no guarantee that all the emails have been deleted after that. MS might still have them!
Nishant, London, UK
Interestingly, and contrary to your report, when I tried to delete my MySpace page it took several attempts at using their cancellation system. Clearly, either the weblinks were broken or they didn't want to lose me as a customer. In the end, when, weeks later my profile was still online, I had contacted their technical support team several times, and they did finally close my account. But having made my decision to delete my profile, I found its continued presence online unacceptable.
Mark Jones, Hereford,
*Yawn* As you point out, the issue of extricating oneself from Facebook has been covered many times. You are really late to the party - if you don't have anything original to write about, don't bother at all. It's just lazy.
Nick, London,
Your article completely missed the point of the Data Protection Act. It is designed to control information held by businesses for their own purposes. It is not designed to protect people from their own exhibitionism.
A registered data controller is admitting their own liability, not that of the user. In the case of social network sites, the data controller is the member of the public who posts the data in the first place.
Whilst I agree with your complaints about Facebook's ethics regarding account termination, don't get this confused with legal responsibilities - that's a different matter altogether.
Perhaps we need to start warning youngsters about the dangers of drinking and surfing!
KR, Stockport,
MySpace STILL has a problem deactivating accounts. I have been pestering them for weeks now to no avail, but am relatively powerless to do more than repeatedly pester them. Will never use their site again as a result, which is a shame - because usually I unsubscribe and re-subscribe if I need to. The DPA goes out the window once more - I doubt the people at Garlik would be surprised.
Johan, Oxford,
The answer is simple... While you're account is still active, for good measure, delete all pictures and videos you posted individually. Then deactivate your account.
Jeremie, Winnipeg, Canada
i've been trying to delete my MYSPACE account for months without any luck.
i've tried to cancel using their process many times and i've gone as far as sending them emails over 10 times.
they don't even bother to write back.
all they care about are keeping subscriber numbers up at any cost.
jay, new york, ny
Delete your photos and your personal information THEN deactivate your Facebook account. You can even change your name if you do to. The only think that would be left in the system then would be your email address.
Nikki, London,
It's just so entertaining how people can be completely naive about who really owns the information that they are so eager to share with the world, goodness knows why.
It should be obvious that whatever you post, whether you delete your account or not will be on record forever, you can be sure of that.
Common sense should always prevail, but seldom does it in people's desire for acceptance, status of which ever personal insecurities drive people to post their lives online.
Socical netwrok web-sites serve a purpose, there is no question about that, but it needs to be tempered by the underlying fact that these sites only exist to gleam as much information about as many people as possible with the aim of making money by selling the information to the highest bidder.
To think otherwise would be simplistic....
Lloyd, UK,