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Talk Like a Pirate Day. I meant to have a pirate themed comic today, but too much grog last night kept that from happening. Despite this, you all should celebrate this great day (Pi-rate shirt optional.) [an error occurred while processing this directive] 09/12/07 [an error occurred while processing this directive] It is no secret that I'm not a big fan of Facebook. Despite my general dismay with the direction of Facebook over the last year, I kept my account as it was useful for finding classmates. With the recent removal of the ability to add your courses to your profile (and to search for people by course), I found myself in a position where I no longer had use for Facebook, and decided to delete my profile.

Easier said than done. You see, Facebook does not provide an option to delete your profile. Let me repeat that so that its inanity can be fully realized. You CANNOT delete YOUR OWN profile from Facebook. The best that is offered by the ever benevolent Facebook is an option to "deactivate" your account, which will leave all information, photos, etc intact on the Facebook servers. This is great, if you think you may want to come back. It is very bad, however, if you care about control over your personal information.

At this point, I did some searching on the internet, and learned that if you wish to delete a Facebook account, they will require you to empty your account (a process that the Facebook interface does not facilitate, as each friend, each wall post, each photo must be removed one by one.) Having done this (thankfully, I'm not very popular, so I only had about 20 wall posts) I deactivated my account and then sent an email to Facebook asking for the deletion of my account. It was an annoying process, but it was over, right? Wrong.

Mike Fenwick to privacy@facebook.com
Please permanently delete my account and all records pertaining to it from your servers. Thank you.

Clive from Facebook to Mike Fenwick
Hi Mike,

You can deactivate your account by using the "Deactivate Account" link on the Account page. Deactivation will completely remove your profile and all associated content on your account from Facebook. In addition, users will not be able to search for you or view any of your information. If you reactivate your account, your profile will be restored in its entirety (friends, photos, interests, etc.).

Reactivating the account simply requires that you log in with your email and password. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Clive
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

Mike Fenwick to privacy@facebook.com
I do not want it deactivated. I want it DELETED from the servers.

Clive from Facebook to Mike Fenwick
Hi Mike,

If you deactivate, your account is removed from the site. However, we save all your profile content (friends, photos, interests, etc.), so if you want to reactivate sometime, your account will look just the way it did when you deactivated. If you do want your information completely wiped from our servers, we can do this for you. However, you need to remove all profile content before we can do this. Once you have cleared your account, let us know and we'll take care of the rest.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Clive
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

Mike Fenwick to privacy@facebook.com
I have had all the information removed from my account for the last two days. Please delete it.

Clive from Facebook to Mike Fenwick
Hi Mike,

We have made the changes that you requested. Please let me know if you have any further issues.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Clive
Customer Support Representative
Facebook

So in the end, it took three separate, and in no way ambiguous requests over the course of two days to get my account deleted. Personally, I think this level of service (or lack thereof) is abhorrent. I'd say it's enough to make me want to delete my Facebook account, but the irony is that I already have, and even if I hadn't, I'd have a hell of a time doing so.