Alan Burlison's Work Related Ramblings

Monday November 19, 2007

How to leave Facebook

As I documented in my last post, it isn't actually possible to leave Facebook, all you can do is 'deactivate' your account. I got in touch with Facebook and asked them to delete my account, and here is the reply I got from them:

I wrote back to Facebook, saying that their response was unacceptable. I noted that their Privacy Policy page says that they are a licensee of the TRUSTe organisation, and that as such they are supposed to give users "choice and consent over how their information is used and shared". I also pointed out that as they are now registered in the UK, they are probably also subject to UK data protection legislation. Finally, I pointed out that Facebook had also been mentioned in a Channel 4 news report about identity theft, and that the media were obviously interested in Facebook's stance on data privacy and protection. I explained that if Facebook wasn't prepared to close my account I was prepared to take up the issue with the three avenues open to me, the TRUSTe complaints process, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and the UK press.

In return I got exactly the same response as the one above. I wrote back to Facebook yet again, repeating that that their response was unacceptable, and that I was therefore going to take the three courses of action I outlined above. I registered complaints at both TRUSTe, the ICO and I also emailed Channel 4 News, explaining my story.

Last week Channel 4 came to interview me, and the item went out on Channel 4 News on Saturday 17th November. A video of the item can be found on the Channel 4 website. There's also details of the response from Facebook to C4's questions about their policy and process for account closures. Once the item had aired, I wrote again to Facebook, explaining that their response was still unacceptable, and that I'd taken the three options I'd identified in my earlier mail. Here's an excerpt from my mail to Facebook:

As well as sending my mail to the Facebook support person I had been dealing with, I also sent it to Chris Kelly, Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer, and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO. Neither mail bounced, so I must have guessed their email addresses correctly. Earlier on today I received the following response from Facebook:

Hurrah! Although to be honest, this raises almost as many questions as it answers. If Facebook has the ability to delete accounts so easily, why don't they make it available to users? In their written response to C4 they say that "Facebook does not use any information from deactivated accounts for advertising purposes." If that is the case, why do they retain the information at all? And although they aren't using it for "advertising purposes", are they making other use of it, and if so, what?

I'm still waiting for responses from either TRUSTe or the ICO, I'll be sure to blog about them when I receive them. In the meantime, if you want to get Facebook to delete your account entirely, you can always try mailing them, quoting the clear precedent they have set by closing my account. I really can't understand why Facebook make the whole process so difficult, they are an extremely popular service and the amount of work involved in closing accounts properly is tiny in comparison to the volume of activity the site sees.