Ask Slashdot: Getting an Uncooperative Website To Delete One's Account? 171
First time accepted submitter trentfoley writes "I've been trying to clean up my digital life (insert joke about having a life) and have run into a situation I fear is too common. Many social websites, nextdoor.com in particular, do not allow a user to delete the account they created. In the case of nextdoor.com, their privacy policy makes it clear that the user owns all of their data. If this is true, I should have the right to destroy that data. These lines of thought brought to mind the recent privacy defeat in Europe. Does the defeat of the EU's Right-to-be-Forgotten legislation bring a practical end to this debate?" I've read complaints today from Nextdoor.com users who say their data was sold, too.
call them (Score:5, Insightful)
I've gotten a lot of sites that don't let you delete accounts to delete the account by simply calling them. Their numbers are often hard to find but get them on the phone and ask nicely.
Re:call them (Score:5, Informative)
Common advice for getting that big social networking site to respond to requests is to mail a paper letter to their HQ, possibly attn: legal affairs. Apparently the success rate is very high.
Re:call them (Score:5, Informative)
Common advice for getting that big social networking site to respond to requests is to mail a paper letter to their HQ, possibly attn: legal affairs. Apparently the success rate is very high.
another good way is if there is a place to put age set is as under 12 many will delete it immediately due to law concerning keeping data about children.
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Yup. Works for most companies, since legal people tend to take (well-written and informed) documents seriously.
Re:call them (Score:5, Informative)
FYI:
Entity Name: NEXTDOOR.COM, INC.
Entity Number: C3063398
Date Filed: 01/24/2008
Status: ACTIVE
Jurisdiction: DELAWARE
Entity Address: 101 SPEAR STREET SUITE 230
Entity City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94105
Agent for Service of Process: WILSON CHAN
Agent Address: 101 SPEAR ST STE 230
Agent City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94105
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Re:call them (Score:4, Informative)
Being nice is generally the key to resolving these things quickly and in your favor. Come in threatening lawsuits, and they'll ignore you until you actually engage a lawyer (at your own expense. )
Re:call them (Score:5, Interesting)
And if that doesn't work then change as much as you can. Your email address should be the easiest. Then any other personal information that you can alter. If they won't delete it then make it worthless to them.
And this is another reason to fight against the current trend of requiring real names for accounts.
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And change the photos, and put nasty notes (they lie, you don't really have control of your account, etc.) in watermarks on the photos, and add new such photos. Do it slowly, a little each day for a couple months. Then just let it sit without warning them. Then don't delete it even if they want you to and re-create it each time they delete it. Create new accounts wilh nothing but bogus information using burner email accounts. Make them wish they had treated you right, even once they start treating you
Re:call them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:call them (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never given correct information to any website to start. It was completely obvious that they would use that information to their advantage as that is what capitalist corporations *do*.
Was there ever an advantage to me having the information with them? Is the information needed for them to perform a service for me? If the answer to those questions is no, then they get BS info, and a lower level password I keep in a protected space with all the rest.
If a company truly needs correct information from me, then I'm considerably more careful. However, that is actually quite rare. In most cases I can obfuscate and lie about my identity, even with paid services. Although they are working to plug those "meta" holes by heavily restricting just what you can purchase with prepaid credit cards, money orders, etc.
Social Networking is just plain dangerous when the information is centralized, and I never fell for it. It didn't matter what they were offering. I'm only interested in a completely decentralized, encrypted, p2p model similar to OneSocialMedia and Diaspora. Basically, if the infrastructure is inherently resistant towards surveillance and monetization by hostile parties (I consider advertising and marketing to be extremely hostile to my life) then I'm interested.
This post is a question about how to mitigate or outright reverse the damage to the person's privacy. I'm not sure that is really possible at all. More than likely, it's Pandora's box.
The answer is to have never danced with devil in the pale moonlight in the first place.
Here, just like other places, I purposefully choose identities that have conflicting data sets when you search for it. I know that I'm not 100% protected, but if they want to violate my privacy, they will have to work pretty damn hard to do it.
Re:call them (Score:4, Funny)
Ugh. Extra Cheese post of the year finalist.
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My electric power bill, my garbage, other services are all website paperless situations. So I give websites correct info in some situations.
I also buy things online all the time from places like Amazon, you have to give them your address and name or the stuff won't come to you.
The thing that bugs me is when they mail catalogs to me ENDLESSLY. Paper catalogs. I mean, I browsed their website and bought their product, so I know the
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I'm almost tempted to find out Bill Gate's appropriate personal information.
Or the CEO of [insert offending social website's controlling corporation].
Re:call them (Score:5, Interesting)
Be prepared to spend a long time on the phone though, and even then they often won't really delete your account. I tried this with Apple recently as I had an ancient account from back when I had an early iPod a decade ago. It took half an hour on the phone, I had to listen to endless dire warnings about losing all the data on "my" iCloud account that they made for me without my knowledge or ever agreeing to the terms and conditions. Endless stuff about how all my iTunes purchases with DRM would commit suicide (I never made any) and how all my devices would stop working (battery died years ago, can't be bothered to pry the thing open to replace it, if you can even buy 3rd gen iPod batteries any more).
After all that they finally agreed to delete the account, but added that I would never be able to sign up with the same email address again... So they were not really deleting it. My personal details are still on file somewhere. In the new year I'm going to write to them to demand they expunge everything.
Long story short, we need that EU right to be forgotten and some strong enforcement.
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If at any point your relationship involves a financial transaction, that company might have a valid interest in holding onto the receipts through at least the next year's taxes, and may have a responsibility to hold the records for longer.
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Learn your lesson: Never type real information into a website. Name, rank, number. That's it.
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One funny side effect of feeding Facebook red herrings is that for a while, I was getting ads targeted at dating for Latvian seniors
bit of a tricky question with forums (Score:5, Informative)
Discussion lists traditionally don't give you a right to delete previous postings: Usenet and mailing list archives are forever. One rationale is simply technical inability (archives aren't controlled by a central authority), but there's also a sense that deleting miscellaneous posts from archives fragments the record of past conversations.
So, Nextdoor has forums and discussions. It seems fair to me that they don't retroactively delete posts from those. Therefore they need to maintain some kind of attribution to the now-deleted account. So they can't fully delete the account, in the sense of wiping any traces, but they could just make it a non-operable "deactivated" account that still has the posts attributed, but can't be used anymore. They might agree to hide the profile in this case, as well. Turns out, that is precisely what they do support [nextdoor.com].
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So, Nextdoor has forums and discussions. It seems fair to me that they don't retroactively delete posts from those. Therefore they need to maintain some kind of attribution to the now-deleted account. So they can't fully delete the account, in the sense of wiping any traces, but they could just make it a non-operable "deactivated" account that still has the posts attributed, but can't be used anymore.
Understood.
But if the policy explicitly tells you that your additions are your property, than this argument doesn't work.
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Many discussion forums I've been a part of allow deleting your own posts. Some even allow editing. That they don't give you a mechanism to blindly mass-delete posts wouldn't change your ownership rights over them.
For that matter, "ownership" rights may simply mean that you retain copyright over the posts. This doesn't mean you get to somehow magically make them all vanish on a whim -- no more than an author can go out and change or magically vanish copies of books already in other people's possession.
Re:bit of a tricky question with forums (Score:5, Insightful)
George Lucas was (at least until recently) the owner of the Star Wars Christmas Special. That doesn't give him the right to destroy all tapes made of it in the world. (Much as he wanted to - rumor has it he bought up and destroyed a great many copies before the digital age made it pointless)
Ownership isn't the right to "unpublish".
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Websites "publish" when they broadcast html. Ownership of copyright means you should be able to stop publishing new html, which is what this guy asks.
Licenses already granted (Score:2)
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> Ownership of copyright means you should be able to stop publishing new html
Just because you own the copyright doesn't mean you get to demand that everyone in the world burn the books you sold them.
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I haven't read the agreement but it probably gives them the right to use the information that remains your property forever.
If you've given someone the right to use a piece of your information forever, why would they let you delete it?
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Sure it does.
"You agree that by submitting content to our service, you are granting a non-revokable, perpetual license to said content."
In which case you don't own it.
In the case of nextdoor.com, their privacy policy makes it clear that the user owns all of their data
Re:bit of a tricky question with forums (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure it does.
"You agree that by submitting content to our service, you are granting a non-revokable, perpetual license to said content."
In which case you don't own it.
I'm not sure that follows. It's quite possible to own some land, but for someone else to have (say) a right of way over it - either that you've granted yourself, or that has arisen some other way. Such a right of way doesn't stop you using the land agriculturally, building on it, selling it, granting rights over it to other people, or forbidding third parties to use the land. You don't, however, have the power to revoke the right of way.
In such a situation, you are still the owner of the land, legally and in an everyday sense. Some people would argue that the situation with data is the same - you may remain the owner, but someone else can still have rights over it.
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Uh, let's see. I write a book to which I own copyright. I then give away copies of the book to a million people.
Your scenario is unrelated to the situation the OP describes. This situation does not describe the dissemination of multiple copies of a work. The "owner" does not have to track down this copy or that, it's all in a database maintained by Nextdoor.com.
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That's irrelevant, even if the owner had only sold one copy of his book, he would still not be able to demand it back.
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You do if it's in electronic format. Then you get the benefit of the DMCA :)
Re:bit of a tricky question with forums (Score:5, Insightful)
How does being the owner of something entitle you to someone else being required to provide the means to destroy it?
That's what "ownership" means. You get to control it.
Not necessarily. If you own a listed historic building then destroying or altering it is a criminal offence. There are quite a few other examples where you can own something but not legally destroy it.
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I understand your point, except I have yet to see an Internet forum posting that has the same preservation-worthy historical qualities as, say, the Flatiron Building.
What would make more sense is for sites to have a retention policy. "We will delete posts older than five years, unless otherwise marked" or "all posts will be deleted after 365 days of inactivity of the poster's account." Really, it's almost all trash. Saving the lot of it for posterity is quite pointless.
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Saving the lot of it for posterity is quite pointless.
I quite disagree. An awful lot of it is just transient communications that have no real value today other than entertainment.
What about the technical forums? I can't even begin to count how many posts from over 5 years ago led me towards solutions today. Is there a lot of noise and incorrect data? Sure. However, some sites account for that and rate the answers. Would you want to delete data that is provably valuable in some lines of research?
That's the problem. How do you determine what is a good post and w
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Ownership... In this case its like land ownership, sure you "own" your land, but you have very little rights regarding it. Need permission to do just about anything as far as construction or modifying the property. And if the govt decides that your land has greater benefit with someone else owning it, they can take it and give it to them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London [wikipedia.org]
And if you want to be the person owning it next year, you have to pay your yearly property taxes. Although the more I
you've seen one now. Politicians delete their comm (Score:2)
Funny you should say that now. I was just now reading a historically important post from 1991. Slashdot covered the 20th anniversary of this particular post.
http://classic.slashdot.org/story/11/08/25/1535255 [slashdot.org]
I'm curious, should George Bush be able to delete all records of things he said publicly, to remove all mention of WMD from the archives? There is a strong argument that once you choose to publicly make assertions, to engage in open, written discussion, the comments you chose to publish remain. If I we
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Not necessarily. If you own a listed historic building then destroying or altering it is a criminal offence. There are quite a few other examples where you can own something but not legally destroy it.
Well then, you don't really own that building; it's not your property. Then you're just licensing the right to lease out floor space in the damn thing, or something. As soon as you start mangling definitions, then you can do anything to this world.
Just like video game publishers would love for you to believe you "own" a copy of their game, when in fact you're just "licensing" it from them. The double-definitions and re-definitions needs to stop here, else the road it goes down isn't very pretty.
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As soon as you start mangling definitions, then you can do anything to this world.
You're the only one mangling definitions. He's using the same one everyone else in his jurisdiction does, where (like every where else in the world) "ownership" is defined by statute. Just because you don't like the law doesn't change the fact that the law defines what property "ownership" is. Welcome to civilization. It's an improvement over the previous condition where the definition of "ownership" was "you've killed everyone who wasn't willing to let you keep it."
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He's using the same one everyone else in his jurisdiction does, where (like every where else in the world) "ownership" is defined by statute.
I.e. implying that the definition of the word varies from place to place. The world is a very varied place, and I've been in places where "ownership" was "defined in statute" up until the point when the "statute" changed and individuals no longer "owned" certain things. That tells me diddly about what "ownership" means. Not only that but it, as well as the example in the other post, are contrary to the definition that most people accept in their minds without resorting to "statute".
I understand that you
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Maybe a compromise would be to anonymize the postings. I can see this done one of three ways:
1: Change the postings from the real name to Former-User-1234 (where 1234 is a unique ID code for that one user.)
2: Change the postings where the Former User ID code is just the same code during the message, but is different on a different thread.
3: Change the postings from the real name to "Former User" without a differentiating extension. This way, nobody reading messages knows who posted it.
This is a tough o
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> You can own the parts needed to make a working jet fighter, but you can't legally assemble them into a jet fighter
Actually, you can, and you'd register it as an experimental aircraft.
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So log in and edit every single post to a blank screen and rid yourself of that content.
Or maybe the word own is more of a "you are legally responsible for it" than a "you are legally entitled to it".
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How does being the owner of something entitle you to someone else being required to provide the means to destroy it?
That's what "ownership" means. You get to control it.
If you want that capability you should have thought about that before you created it.
Without question.
But the policy at Nextdoor.com is that you own your content. If in fact you can't control aspects of access or the current state (destroy or keep), than you *don't* own it.
What does that mean for your posts here? "Comments owned by the poster." Yet you can't edit or delete posts.
Seems Subby is the type who doesn't learn from mistakes. In trying to remove "owned" content from one site, you just get more content created with the same issues on a different site.
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This is part of the Member Agreement that you accept when you sign up. While I couldn't find anything more precise, the second sentence sure sounds like Nextdoor is giving themselves a license to using your content, which is what a lot of sites
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they grant themselves an unlimited, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use it
Almost. They specify where and how they will use it. Content written in Los Angeles will not show up in New York City. And the decision to post to your neighborhood website or to multiple (within a radius of a mile or so) is made by the user at the time of the post. This isn't nearly as awful as Facebook letting companies stick your name and face next to their product.
Full Disclosure: I use Nextdoor. I have my own issues with parts of it, but I overall like the product. And I did receive a free t-shir
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How does being the owner of something entitle you to someone else being required to provide the means to destroy it?
That's what "ownership" means. You get to control it.
You can own a copy of a book and not have the right to destroy other copies. You can own the copyright to a book and not have the right to destroy other people's copies of it. I can't find anything on Nextdoor.com that describes exactly what rights come with "owning your content", but I doubt they only gave themselves rights to it that are subject to the users' approval.
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How does being the owner of something entitle you to someone else being required to provide the means to destroy it?
That's what "ownership" means. You get to control it.
Nope.
If you write an article for a newspaper you can 'own' that article, sure.
That doesn't mean the publisher is obliged to hunt down all the newspapers they sold just because you regret writing it.
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Not exactly. From that link:
So everything is still there.
Why not kill the account completely except for the past posts? And put the username and email address into a do-not-allow list so that a future user won't be able to take it over.
The reason is that they want to be able to sell your information.
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Data Modification/Deletion. You can delete your account by contacting us. Alternatively, you can delete most types of individual Content items. Deleting your account will delete all Content you provided, except that we may choose to retain Content incorporated into the neighborhood's conversations (and, as applicable, nearby neighborhoods); and we may attribute that Content to your name even after you depart. If we allow you to change neighborhoods on our site, we may retain your conversation contributions in your old neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods (and keep the attribution to your name) but allow you to move your profile to your new neighborhood. If you are the subject of an unauthorized profile, please contact us.
I can see where discussion sites don't allow for deletion as it is a royal PITA to maintain site integrity, threads, etc. if a user disappears.
Take Slashdot for example...
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It should be easy. Since all the posts should be in a database, just replace the content with something like --self-deleted-- and keep everything else the same.
For anyone quoting it from before it was deleted I'd say "fair use" if they're in the USofA.
Take your account:
chill (34294)
Leave the user number the same (34294) and just --self-deleted-- the user name (chill)
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Yes.
An interesting post is here [tutsplus.com] on how to create a forum from scratch. The use of foreign keys to control this sort of referential deletion is part of the article. A pretty good primer, actually.
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Usenet and mailing list archives are forever
This isn't necessarily true. I worked at a place where the CEO came across some archived mailing-list posts that contained sensitive company information (apparently the previous sysadmin didn't have much regard for keeping sensitive company information secret when he had questions). An email or two asking them nicely to remove the content and it was gone. Granted, if it had been propagated to many other archive sites, this could have been a major pain in the ass.
social media site trust (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't have to worry about my 2000 vintage MySpace site, no one goes there anyway.
Security Breaches (Score:3)
I'm often interested in deleting accounts I don't use to avoid handing over my data to attackers when their systems are breached. The more sites I've given my data to, the more likely some random attack that grabs a DB dump is to have a copy of my Name, Email, (hashed)? password, etc. Depending on the type of site it may even get some bonus data in the form of answers to security questions.
This sounds lame, but the amount of spam currently directed at the accounts I used on: the motley fool, eharmony, Adobe, is quite high. Just putting my name at the top makes it that much more likely I'll be scammed by some phishing email.
Do what you can (Score:5, Insightful)
Change all your details in the account settings, name, address, email etc.
Then, deactivate the account like they tell you in their help on their site.
http://help.nextdoor.com/customer/portal/articles/805273-deactivating-your-account [nextdoor.com]
That's about it. Not even Slashdot will erase your old posts when you decide to quit here, nobody does that, it would ruin all the past conversations.
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Sorry forgot to post another line:
"If you'd like to deactivate your account altogether, you can do so through Account Settings. (Note: If you do not see the link to deactivate on this page, contact Support.)"
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If you'd like to deactivate your account altogether ...
And there's the point:
The policy says he owns the data.
Deactivation is different than deletion. If you own the data, you should be able to do what you want with it, right?
Otherwise a site should not imply of they that the user "owns" the data.
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It doesn't imply anything. It's very clear.
From Nextdoor Member Agreement [nextdoor.com]:
Content. You retain all ownership rights to the text, photos, video and other content you submit to Nextdoor.com (collectively, your “Content”). We can publish your Content in your neighborhood website or to nearby neighborhoods as described in our privacy policy [nextdoor.com].
From Nextdoor Privacy Policy [nextdoor.com]:
In some cases, we may limit your ability to edit or remove Content from Nextdoor.com.
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If you own the data, you should be able to do what you want with it, right?
Sure, you can sell copies to other people, too. You've already sold a copy to them.
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If they are anything like Facebook then deactivation is meaningless. Facebook keeps all your personal data and history on file. Changing your details doesn't help, they keep a full history of every name you ever used, every date of birth, every status update. When the site finally goes under and they sell off your data that info will be in there.
Apple needed an engineer to go in and manually delete most of my account. I imagine the situation here will be the same; someone has to remove all the historical da
Regulations are needed (Score:2)
This is not at all uncommon, unfortunately. Even sites that let you delete your account, complete with a warning about not being able to recover it later, rarely actually delete it (and often have no issue reactivating it later). The problem is that it's basically up to each site to determine how they store user data, through ToS and EULA's that haven't exactly been found to be legally binding or enforceable. There's also no basic expectation for consumers as a result of the lack of such regulations.
You'
Violate the TOS (Score:5, Informative)
Well. As a last resort.
1) Change all of your user data that you can. Edit your profile so that all of the data is either blank, or not yours at all.
2) Edit your age down to below 13 years old. This may kick in automatic account privacy settings.
3) If none of this works, then look at the TOS and find things that they don't want you to do. (ie, Wikipedia freaks out if you mention suing them on any forum. A TOS might make it a violation to badmouth the parent company, or to solicit other users. You might think of creating a couple of throwaway accounts, and getting into a royal flamewar with your invisible clones. Call them really bad names. Threaten to sue them.)
4) Do not let number three go into the realm of anything illegal. Don't post porn in public fora. You simply want to make yourself unwelcome at this location.
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2) Edit your age down to below 13 years old. This may kick in automatic account privacy settings.
Some sites won't allow you to do that.
3) If none of this works, then look at the TOS and find things that they don't want you to do. (ie, Wikipedia freaks out if you mention suing them on any forum. A TOS might make it a violation to badmouth the parent company, or to solicit other users. You might think of creating a couple of throwaway accounts, and getting into a royal flamewar with your invisible clones. Call them really bad names. Threaten to sue them.)
All the site will do is disable the account, delete the bad posts through the normal moderation process and keep the good posts. You will be no further ahead.
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This may actually be a felony. (I.e. it is arguably a violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, limiting the use of a computer to that which is authorized, IIRC).
A "felony"?
Creating sock-puppet accounts and arguing with myself? It's certainly *not* a crime for me to abuse my own computer this way, and if anything at all, a "ToS" violation is nothing more than an excuse to ban my account.
It's certainly *not* a felony.
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You can try claiming it's not all you want, but that doesn't change the legal facts.
To the letter of the law under the CFAA ANY USE OF A COMPUTER SYSTEM THAT IS NOT AN AUTHORIZED USE is a felony. You must have been asleep the last few years if you missed all the cases of prosecutorial abuse of this law where people have been charged with felonies for (among other things) making accounts for a fake persona (the Megan Meier suicide case) and downloading things too quickly (the Aaron Swartz case). Those are
UK : Data Protection Act (Score:3, Informative)
In the UK, the Data Protection Act requires that they delete your data on request.
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In the UK, the Data Protection Act requires that they delete your data on request.
But nextdoor.com is a US company that has no divisions or operations in the EU - so it does not apply
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There are eight tets [ico.org.uk] to pass to Since the name is the only thing displayed after an account is deactivated the posts it fails the first test
Ownership (Score:5, Informative)
There are many comments about the ownership of the posts and how if the poster owned the posts he should be able to delete them. I have a different view.
From the Nextdoor Member Agreement [nextdoor.com]:
Content. You retain all ownership rights to the text, photos, video and other content you submit to Nextdoor.com (collectively, your “Content”). We can publish your Content in your neighborhood website or to nearby neighborhoods as described in our privacy policy.
Notice they say rights. The poster owns the posts in that the poster is responsible for the content and the site can not sell or copy the posts to other sites. Those are the general copyright laws. The issue comes in that by posting on the site the owner has given a copy to someone else, much like giving someone a book. The poster still owns the right to the post but not ownership of that specific copy.
This is from the Privacy Policy [nextdoor.com]:
Data Modification/Deletion. You can delete your account by contacting us. Alternatively, you can delete most types of individual Content items. Deleting your account will delete all Content you provided, except that we may choose to retain Content incorporated into the neighborhood's conversations (and, as applicable, nearby neighborhoods); and we may attribute that Content to your name even after you depart. If we allow you to change neighborhoods on our site, we may retain your conversation contributions in your old neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods (and keep the attribution to your name) but allow you to move your profile to your new neighborhood. If you are the subject of an unauthorized profile, please contact us.
It looks pretty explicit that they will retain conversations.
And a pony (Score:2, Insightful)
"their privacy policy makes it clear that the user owns all of their data. If this is true, I should have the right to destroy that data. "
What is the basis for such a logical leap?
If you're going to make an overreaching claim, you might as well ask for a pony too.
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Ponies are nice [deviantart.com], good idea!
Here's a thought (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want your life on the net, stop registering with your real information.
Easiest fix (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way to win this game is not to play.
Don't feel you have to participate in every social media site. You really won't miss anything if you don't. People will tell you, "You have to have a social media presence to get a job" but that's just BS.
In fact, a very good skill to develop is the ability to ignore cultural phenomenon occasionally. It's almost like a superpower and it can really impact your happiness quotient. For example, I've made it to the last act of a semi-celebrity drama without knowing what a "Duck Dynasty" is, and the feeling is awesome. It takes a bit of preparation and planning, but it is possible to filter out nonsense. And make no mistake, social media is nonsense, and it's dangerous. You think you're getting something when in fact you're having something taken from you.
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Note: You might ask, "If you don't know what a "Duck Dynasty" is, then how do you know the three-act arc of it's drama has come to an end?"
The answer is that I know someone who obsessively follows all that shit. I asked her about a week back if there was anything about a "Duck Dynasty" that I need to know. She said, "Nah". Today, I got an email from her telling me the story has come to some denouement and said that my willful ignorance of the entire topic turned out to have been a wise choice. (I ask t
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Please Note: You might ask, "If you don't know what a "Duck Dynasty" is, then how do you know the three-act arc of it's drama has come to an end?"
The answer is that I know someone who obsessively follows all that shit. I asked her about a week back if there was anything about a "Duck Dynasty" that I need to know. She said, "Nah". Today, I got an email from her telling me the story has come to some denouement and said that my willful ignorance of the entire topic turned out to have been a wise choice. (
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* The End *
^--- !!!
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I dunno how that happened. I swear I only hit Submit once. And don't that Slashdot code throw an error when you accidentally duplicate?
Oh well, live and learn, right? But not about Duck Dynasty. Nossir.
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The only way to win this game is not to play.
Good point. If I may expound on that a little, once you post anything to any site, you essentially lose control of it. With social media like Slashdot which allow you to be a Pseudonymous Coward, there's little downside to that. But for sites like Facebook which require you to provide your real name and other real information, you lose something. Whether you gain more than you lose is up to you. For example, making contact with long-lost friends by using your real name on Facebook might be worth the lo
Abine has a service for this (Score:4, Informative)
Its called 'DeleteMe' [abine.com] and you can check with them to see if they can help you with particular sites.
This is the same group that makes the anti-tracking browser addon 'DoNotTrackMe'.
Re:Abine has a service for this (Score:5, Informative)
Its called 'DeleteMe' [abine.com] and you can check with them to see if they can help you with particular sites.
This is the same group that makes the anti-tracking browser addon 'DoNotTrackMe'.
Seems there are modtrolls who don't want people to know about DeleteMe...
"Hey, it was the internet! Everybody was doing it! (Score:3)
"
Just always be ready with damage-control on the stuff you have sprinkled around online. Always be up front with yourself and your employers / whomever else whose opinion of your past internet activities could possibly ever matter enough to make you care that much about it / your employers.
They would mostly be concerned about the image that you reflect onto their company. I've thought of this some times. To me, the best idea is to form a website that is your "professional image" site, and do damage-control from there. Maybe package it very simply with a link off of the front page to "My Web Footprint, Q & A".
Start with a nice lead-in that captures the empathy of the audience.
Go into detail about things that you find cringe-worthy, and shrug them off as not being a very big deal and not being reflective of who you are, today. Explain the misconceptions in your mind that led to those past statements or behaviors, and let the audience know how glad you are that you aren't like that any more. If there's evidence of that, link to the evidence.
There, now you're not a potential liability, you're a success story that the corporation can be happy to link to and parade around as proof that they are in touch with real people, not just any people, upward-mobile people.
You have the opportunity to get out of it in ways that older folks who did things they're ashamed of in the 60's and 70's didn't have:
(1.) The opportunity to face it head-on by knowing fully well that it's easily discoverable information and by becoming your own blackmailer ahead of anyone else.
(2.) The opportunity to spin it however you want and make it into whatever sort of rags-to-riches, turned-over-a-leaf, now-I-know-what-the-salt-of-the-Earth-is-really-like sort of story you really think people want to see.
(3.) The opportunity to surround it with gay frog images and links to buy your published-on-demand memoirs of those weird times.
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Then --- presto! --- it wasn't you but those other guys.
No explanations required. Simple dismissal. Plausible deniability. Easy as 1-2-3.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
nuke it from orbit (Score:2)
Email the investment bankers. (Score:3)
I filtered their email with the following rules:
1. forward email to originator
2. forward to person who did this to me
3. forward to the investment team who owns the site: shastaventures.com
4. mark as junk
5. delete
I figure if they won't remove me, they might as well get the email too. You may want to use their email addresses and change the one you have on file with them.
Ask Slashdot? (Score:3)
POF.COM requires paid account to delete (Score:2)
in a change of years' old policy, plentyoffish.com now requires users purchase a PAID ACCOUNT upgrade in order to delete their account. that's a really shitty way to do business, guys.
Expectations (Score:2)
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Did you really delete [groovypost.com] your Facebook account, or just deactivate it?
Already solved (Score:3)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive [wikipedia.org]
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Non-EU based companies are required to store person-related data in the EU, and thus are in the same situation.
only if they want to be registered under the data protection act. They may do so in order to be able to process data on behalf of an organisation that is, for example a US based company wishing to process a payroll for an EU based company would have to do so. This does not apply to no EU companies that you might just decide to register with and use across the internet though.
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I'm not sure.
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I'm not sure.
OK thought experiment. Barron Bomburst of Vulgaria passes a law that any company which is accesses by citizens of his country has to give him a $1,000,000 birthday present. Do you think that companies based solely in the USA, or anywhere else, would comply?
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data that is incomplete, inaccurate or isn't being processed in compliance with the data protection rules
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Why isn't it possible to delete a Slashdot account, and have all your old posts become Anonymous?
That would be almost like rewriting history. Bad idea.
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I wonder when the new site will be rolled out (in its current form I hope never, cause it sucks).
They asked for feedback [slashdot.org] 3 months ago and then the Beta has been just lurking there.
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So why do you comment on EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE here if you don't want the wisdom of Anonymous Coward to be spread far and wide, and to last through the ages?...