Does Facebook Own You Forever?

In a recent feature article on Facebook and the "new privacy," I stressed how the company's invasive data policy seizes lots of information from users, even after they quit the site:

Even if users terminate their membership, pictures of them posted by others remain online. But users can't really quit, anyway. Like guests at the Hotel California, people who check out of Facebook have a hard time leaving. Profiles of former members are preserved in case people want to reactivate their accounts. And all users' digital selves can outlive their creators. As the company's "terms of use" explain, profiles of deceased members are kept "active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments."

The issue has generally received far less media scrutiny than user revolts over programs that spread people's information, such as the "feed" controversy and protests against "social ads," though bloggers and social media observers have flagged this problem before. DavidNYC posted one of the more memorable pleas in December, "Delete My Bleeping Account, Facebook!"

Today the New York Times weighs in, with an excellent article by Maria Aspan:

Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network's use of personal data. While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network. "It's like the Hotel California," said Nipon Das, 34, a director at a biotechnology consulting firm in Manhattan, who tried unsuccessfully to delete his account this fall. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." It took Mr. Das about two months and several e-mail exchanges with Facebook's customer service representatives to erase most of his information from the site, which finally occurred after he sent an e-mail threatening legal action. But even after that, a reporter was able to find Mr. Das's empty profile on Facebook and successfully sent him an e-mail message through the network.

That means the company is collecting potentially permanent digital dossiers for tens of millions of users, without their knowledge or consent. Set aside search engines, and Facebook is the third most popular website in the country. Over eight out of ten college students are registered on the site -- it's considered weird to be on campus without a Facebook profile nowadays. Yet despite its reach and remarkably aggressive data policies, few parents, universities or regulators have stepped up to consider what policies can protect the Facebook generation from Facebook.

Update: Facebook's Brandee Barker sent in a response to this post:

"There are two different ways to remove your information from Facebook. The first is to deactivate an account. Once a user deactivates the account, his or her profile becomes inaccessible on the main Facebook service, and the data is kept by Facebook only to allow easy reactivation. The second option is to delete the profile altogether. When a user deletes his or her profile, personal information -- such as name and all email addresses associated with the account -- is deleted from Facebook servers. If a user decides to join Facebook again, he or she would need to create a new profile. We are working to better explain the simple deactivation process, and to ease the deletion process for those who want their personal information removed from our servers.

Comments (21)

1. I just get in and see this laughable subject!

   The Loony Left is just Sooooooooo concerned about privacy while most under-30s' are telling the world all about themselves.......all of course, to the benefit of, heavens, corporate evil doers!

   Here's a thought: the Gov't is the secrete controlling shareholders of these `social' network sites and is monitoring EVERYTHING and parceling out info. wanted by the corp. evil-doers, the intelligence evil-doers, and the political evil-doers...LOL!!

   Posted by Happy at 02/11/2008 @ 6:20pm

2. ...bailout for idiots in the making?

   Posted by RIO BRAVO 02/11/2008 @ 7:11pm

   Look out for a Facebook Act from our do-nothing Congress,...but wait, maybe not....so many of the Tech money-grubbers are shoveling money to the Dems...and as we know, information is power.....and what does power do?

   Posted by Happy at 02/11/2008 @ 7:19pm

3. Ahhh, you kids today...with your Hula-hoops and your fax machines!

   Posted by Mask at 02/11/2008 @ 7:32pm

4. Zero, I would honestly hop the mountains and drive down First Street just to see if you did that.

   Seriously though, networking sites like Facebook and MySpace bring out the neo-Luddite in me, and it seems my suspicions are correct. If you want to stay private in this day and age, minimize your digital footprint.

   Posted by yutsano at 02/11/2008 @ 8:03pm

5. Ari: Well said. Facebook's failure to address issues like this as they grow is really putting them at risk of losing users' trust. Teens and college students are a lot savvier than most of the pundits give them credit for: they realize that there may be stuff on their Facebook/MySpace that they're not going to want broadly available -- by now, they've all heard the stories about colleges and employers checking these sites. If Facebook can't be trusted to remove stuff when requested, somebody will come along to fill the gap.

   The quote from TRUSTe (which certifies web privacy practices) really illustrates your point about nobody looking at policies to protect this problem. The spokesperson "said its account deletion process was 'inconvenient,' but that Facebook was 'being responsive to us and they currently meet our requirements.'"

   "Inconvenient" seems like a bit of an understatement.

   Posted by JonPincus at 02/11/2008 @ 8:36pm

6. And to your other posters: do I correctly hear you as saying that since *you* don't like or understand Facebook, in your view its users deserve no protection?

   If so, unsurprisingly, I disagree.

   Posted by JonPincus at 02/11/2008 @ 8:39pm

7. Curious...100 years ago (or more)...

   Did people object to the "invasion of their privacy", when they got a telephone, by being put in ...the telephone book????

   Posted by Mask at 02/11/2008 @ 9:00pm

8. Everyone I know has been abandoning Facebook because it installed Zango software, has terrible privacy policies, so forth and so on. People have moved off MySpace and in 2 years from now Facebook will be looked at similiarly. It doesn't take long for people to get the cl00 these days.

   Posted by ZERO 02/11/2008 @ 8:43pm

   What's your position on Equifax, supermarket cards, national identity cards, phone records, etc.? I'd argue that kind of data, aggregated, makes the problems of Facebook look like child's play.

   Posted by MASK 02/11/2008 @ 9:00pm

   There's a reason why unlisted telephones have been around since at least the 1950's.

   Posted by srjenkins at 02/11/2008 @ 9:40pm

9. "determined by us"

   and who exactly are "you"?

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/11/2008 @ 10:33pm

10. NCH in the summer and I'm halfway to Vancouver anyway, Snoqualmie if Seattle/SEA-TAC is my actual destination (Tacoma and the immediate south as well), but Stevens spits you out in such a weird place.

    It's kind of funny, I have a few friends who are bugging me to join up MySpace tonight, and I'm not giving in. I'm sure they're shaking their heads at my stubbornness, but hey, there's enough information floating around out there about me as it is. I don't feel the need to supplement or augment what else is drifting around for prying eyes to see.

    Posted by yutsano at 02/12/2008 @ 12:07am

11. Those of us who refuse to play at sites like MySpace or Facebook are viewed as part of the over the hill gang. I prefer to view it as the group who grew up with 1984 and an expectation of privacy. And just because someone is paranoid doesn't necessarily mean that someone won't be out to get you if they have the opportunity.

    Posted by sara48909 at 02/12/2008 @ 04:28am

12. Facebook was great when it first came out- it was safe. Only college students with college emails could sign up, only the people you make a friend can view your personal info, and there weren't any of those stupid apps on it. Posted by SRJENKINS 02/11/2008 @ 9:40pm :: exactly. I deleted my myspace for facebook, and soon as I find another suitable network, I'll be getting rid of facebook. These social sites get greedy and over-expand, and when they do we all jump ship.

    Posted by jro555 at 02/12/2008 @ 08:37am

13. well, to me the name

    FACEbook says it all.

    why not, SOULbook or HEARTbook or IDEAbook?

    how tacky.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/12/2008 @ 09:33am

14. There's a reason why unlisted telephones have been around since at least the 1950's.

    Posted by SRJENKINS 02/11/2008 @ 9:40pm

    Ahh, but what about BEFORE the 1950s?

    Posted by Mask at 02/12/2008 @ 10:19am

15. A friend of mine died in December. Her profile is still up. It creeps me out.

    Posted by poet128 at 02/12/2008 @ 10:43am

16. Posted by MASK 02/12/2008 @ 10:19am

    Go look at an older U.S. Statistical Abstract. In 1900, there were 1,300,000 telephones and more than 75 million people. In 1940, there were 20,000,000 telephones and 130,000,000 people. The U.S. didn't even break 30% per capita telephone penetration until the 1950s.

    In the early part of the century, it is also worth noting that telephone service wasn't like it is now. There were big differences between local and long distance, urban and rural (party lines, anyone?), and so forth. So, it isn't really a good comparison until you have a true nationwide network, which happened after that point. Even then, it's not particularly good.

    I'm not sure when unlisted telephone "service" started, but I'd wager it happened shortly after the first residential telephone book.

    Posted by srjenkins at 02/12/2008 @ 12:18pm

17. Posted by JRO555 02/12/2008 @ 08:37am

    The central problem is that it is paid for by advertising. So, you are always going to have the temptation to create more ad space and give away more personal information to generate revenue.

    It's the same problem with network broadcasting and why people are subjected to an average 18 minutes of commercials for every hour of TV they watch - almost 1/3 of their time. Pretty high price to pay for your entertainment - particularly if you are watching something like a 2 hour movie. If you figure they make that movie three hours to work in all the commercials, you are essentially "paying" by watching an hour worth of commercials. Given movie rental rates, that's a dumb exchange. Better to rent the movie and work for an hour to pay for it and put the change in your pocket.

    Posted by srjenkins at 02/12/2008 @ 12:29pm

18. Oh, one other thing, check out the original NYT article

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/technology/11facebook.html

    It is also useful to read the suggestions of tech people. I liked this poster's comments on Slashdot.

    "When you want to leave, start adding bogus data. Friend people you don't know. Change the bio data. Tag yourself in pictures you aren't in. Basically, generate random activity. Defriend your actual friends. Change your name. After a time, it becomes very difficult to determine what is real and what is fake."

    http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/12/1354255

    Although, it may be that Facebook has a backend that saves versions that might make this less effective.

    Posted by srjenkins at 02/12/2008 @ 12:38pm

19. Look I'm 21 I saw this problem from a mile away. It's why I was always fine with being the oddball who doesn't have a myspace or facebook. I saw that they data-mined. So I chose not to participate. It's not like this is non-participatory and you can see the problems very simply from very far off. I'm more concerned with the government taking away my privacy by illegally tapping phones than I am of Facebook and Myspace because I have no choice and no option to stop the government. I can not have a phone but then how am I supposed to be able to work?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 02/12/2008 @ 1:02pm

20. Posted by SRJENKINS 02/12/2008 @ 12:18pm

    Feel free to research it, SRJ...but I think you're actually making my point. Facebook is relatively new. And I doubt if in 1900, those million-five folks were in as much panic about unlisted numbers as the FB'ers are about it.

    This is new technology and a new paradigm, but some of the old history can still be applied. And I'll bet it's following a similar timeline, with the 1900s folks beginning to worry about privacy on their telephones...at the same rate as the 2000s folks beginning to worry about privacy on FB.

    Posted by Mask at 02/12/2008 @ 2:06pm

21. Posted by MASK 02/12/2008 @ 2:06pm

    I think ZERO's 02/11/2008 @ 9:08pm post illustrates why they aren't analogous.

    There's also a big demographic difference. I'd reckon penetration rates of social networking is ubiquitious below 25 years old, known but not considered useful by much of the 25-50 crowd and relatively unheard of in the 50 plus crowd.

    Another reason why I don't think these are good comparisons is that the adoption rates of new technologies have changed. You could plot out telephone adoption, against VCRs, wireless telephones, CDs, DVDs, ipods, HDTV and so forth and you'll see high penetration rates in a short period of time.

    But even in your own terms, your argument rests on assumptions. You don't know when unlisted numbers came into play in cities, when telephone directories became available and so on. You really can't make the argument you want to make without knowing these details.

    Just as a critical observation, you depend too much on historical antecedents to make your points. As they say in stock market circles, the past cannot be used to predict future performance.

    Posted by srjenkins at 02/12/2008 @ 3:42pm