Quitting Social Media
Problems with quitting social media
On August, 02, 2011, TechEye published a story concerning the difficulty of deleting Facebook. The article by Rebecca Backer was titled “Facebook’s grip on all of your data – exposed”.
The story reminded me of another social media service known as “Hot or Not”. I signed up for “Hot or Not” about ten years ago. I decided to delete my account after being a member for less than one year.
The “Hot or Not” website sent me confirmation and promised to never contact me again. To my surprise, I recieve an email about ten years later. The letter informed me that the original owners of “Hot or Not” had purchased the site and that I was still a member.
Legitimate
My first reaction was that this was spam and to ignore it. Three months later, I am sent a list of members who are allegedly hot. A quick internet search confirms that “Hot or Not” actually exists.
I have been ignoring the list of members being sent. I do not know what my membership name or password is nor do I care. This is an invasion of privacy.
Data Storage
Rebecca Baker’s article implies that Facebook “is making life difficult for users who want out”. She alleges that “Facebook has hidden the ‘Permanenetly delete’ option for average users”.
Rebecca states that people have to “manually delete their Facebook albums, content on their wall and their messages”.
Permanent Deletion
Rebecca’s article mentions that “little ‘x’ next to your messages means archive not delete”. In order to permanetly delete your facebook account, you need to submit a request to Facebook accounding to Facebook Delete FAQ.
People sometimes forget the importance of reading social media policies before signing up. I remember that I did not sign up for Facebook because when their policy stated that information is kept even after accounts are deactivated.
I find it funny that people are now concerned with privacy issues. It is not as if Google, Facebook, other social media and other data mining companies hid their intentions. It reminds me of my time working in a telemarketing firm when a prospect was shocked that her points card gave us her unlisted phone number.
Conclusion:
Do not entrust your privacy to just any company. Social media outlets and data mining firms ask for and use your private details Read the details before signing up.
Most companies are in the data mining business. We are lucky that some firms actually let us see their policies such as Google and Facebook. All companies reserve the right to change policies at any time that can affect our relationships with them.
- Recommendations:
- Read details before signing up for a service.
- Be on the lookout for changes to policy.
- Never trust remarks, make sure it is official written policy.
Tags: facebook, google, Hot or Not, Quit, Social Media
This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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