
Just Delete Me - decklin
http://robblewis.me/just-delete-me/
======
slg
It isn't really feasible for a service like this, but it would be interesting
to know what each of these sites do with your data once your account is
deleted. Facebook has recently come under fire for their ghost profiles and I
can't imagine they are the only company that keeps data on people who aren't
official users.

~~~
andrew_gardener
I second this. Maybe they could add an extra note detailing any know user data
retained by the service (at least as far as the general public knows)

~~~
rmlewisuk
We are looking at adding more information such as data retention, etc.

~~~
hugoroy
Hm. Do you really want to do that on your own? You'd have to find the ToS,
document ToS changes, analyse the ToS, etc.

We're trying to do that already at [http://tosdr.org](http://tosdr.org),
please join in ([http://github.com/tosdr](http://github.com/tosdr)) and
[http://tosback.org](http://tosback.org)

Edit: Hm I thought 5apps supported https already, i guess i was wrong

~~~
sengstrom
Hmmm...

You attempted to reach tosdr.org, but instead you actually reached a server
identifying itself as *.5apps.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on
the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be
trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of
tosdr.org.

~~~
bluefinity
I'm guessing you have HTTPS Everywhere installed. It works fine on HTTP.

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nileshtrivedi
Quora gives me a link to "deactivate" my account but wants me to write a mail
to privacy@quora.com for "deleting" my account. Others have reported that the
requests sent to this email address are not fulfilled, neither are the mails
even replied to.

I want to know the names of assholes in charge of this company so that I can
avoid ever working with them.

~~~
gtirloni
I got my account deleted just fine by emailing them. Have you tried?

~~~
michaelt
I e-mailed them, then waited a few months, then e-mailed them again, then went
through the site manually blanking my answers then deleting them (surprise,
the 'delete' button just hides your answer), and only then did I get an e-mail
back saying my account had been deleted.

I agree with nileshtrivedi these Quora guys seem like assholes - that's why I
decided to delete my account in the first place.

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pacifi30
Add all the dating websites as well, they are notorious to not providing an
option to delete your account. Here is the list that I complied in my blog, I
posted on hacker news yesterday [http://nishant.posthaven.com/why-i-cant-
delete-my-dating-acc...](http://nishant.posthaven.com/why-i-cant-delete-my-
dating-account)

eharmony -> only cancel membership

match -> only cancel membership

coffee meet bagel -> only cancel membership

truffle -> delete accounts

okcupid -> will delete account

------
pyxy
[http://www.deleteyouraccount.com/](http://www.deleteyouraccount.com/)

~~~
9emE0iL18gxCqLT
Other similar sites:
[http://www.accountkiller.com/en/](http://www.accountkiller.com/en/) &&
[http://tosdr.org](http://tosdr.org)

------
miguelrochefort
Why do people expect data about themselves to magically disappear from the
Internet? One should always assume that everything you communicate online
(explicitly or not) has the potential to exist forever.

~~~
Argorak
Because we are talking about proper legal entities here. If I want my data
deleted, they should have the means an the will to do so. Nothing "magical" at
all.

It is not as if I am asking "the internet" to delete my stuff, but "facebook",
"google" or "okcupid".

~~~
miguelrochefort
If they agreed that they would delete everything they know about you at your
request, sure. But most of them don't, which means you can't do anything.

Companies should not be forced to implement ways to delete data about users.
That's just silly.

Why do you want them to delete the data anyway? To me, it sounds silly and
looks like some kind of censorship. Embrace transparency and live with the
fact that what is public remains public.

------
dictum
>Skype: Contact customer services. You’ll need to know 5 contacts from your
contacts list, the month you created your account, and your signup email
address.

Why do I get the feeling asking Skype to cancel your account immediately puts
you into a special watchlist?

~~~
dredmorbius
Given the negative consequences (DoS) of an unauthorized account deactivation,
this is actually a fairly reasonable protocol.

The challenge of electronic services is in identifying your customers.
Especially when you're doing something allegedly on their behalf. Double-
especially when that has permanent state/data loss consequences.

~~~
wodenokoto
Who the hell knows which month they signed up? I signed up over 6 years ago.

I think it is unfair to expect people to save their original email
confirmation mail for upwards to 10 years (skype was released in 2003),
especially given that nowhere in the mail it says that this is really
important to keep.

~~~
dredmorbius
I can top that.

A good friend's AOL email account was compromised. They'd been AOL customers
(paid) for years, though when the email service went free, they discontinued
payment and got broadband service from another provider.

AOL insisted that they give the credit card number that had been associated
with the account. A card which hadn't been used and hadn't existed for years.
Needless to say, it wasn't available.

For all I know, that email account is still active and valid, though hopefully
no critical information is being sent to it.

Again: figuring out how to identify your true customer (or user) is hard.

------
mthoms
Suggested site to add: nsa.gov

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signed0
Here's a screenshot, the server seems to be overloaded.

[http://i.imgur.com/1e5XzWc.png](http://i.imgur.com/1e5XzWc.png)

~~~
RossM
In case the blog goes down again, the link to the site concerned:
[http://justdelete.me/](http://justdelete.me/)

------
ChristianMarks
Topsy appears to offer a data deletion service at accountremoval@topsy.com.
Try asking them to delete their online archive of a defunct G+ account.
(Defunct means that the G+ account and its content is deleted.) The service
autoresponds to your email entreaty, but nothing is deleted. I have been
emailing them for two weeks. The reply is the same:

    
    
      Re: Please delete my G+ content. I have deleted my G+ account
    
      Topsy Support  |  AUG 18, 2013  |  09:22PM UTC 
      Thank you for submitting your request. We have received
      your request and are working on responding to you as 
      soon as possible. If you have any additional information
      to add to this case, please reply to this email.

~~~
newman314
Topsy is f __king evil. They have been gaming SERPs for quite a while now. I
would lump them in the same category as Pipl, Spokeo etc.

------
ggchappell
One sentence here is curious:

> JustDelete.Me is a directory of urls to delete your account from web
> services. (Yes, I am aware how terrible that description is. If you’ve got a
> better one, let me know).

Sounds like a fine description to me. (It's _certainly_ better than average. I
find the descriptions of about half of the "take a look at this site" posts on
HN to be incomprehensible; it's nice to be able to read a post like this and
immediately know what it is talking about.)

So, is something wrong with this description? If so, can anyone tell me what
the problem is?

~~~
TillE
"Directory of urls" is a bit geeky and not quite accurate.

~~~
rmlewisuk
It's changed to "direct links" rather than "urls" now.

------
AhtiK
I wish to see a similar site made for changing passwords.

One use case is when the password storage is compromised but also helps when
you grow more paranoid over time and need to rotate and max out the passwords.

------
wodenokoto
Given that netflix offers 1 month free subscription, I kinda get why they
won't delete accounts completely. Else people could just sign up, delete and
sign up again for free netflix.

------
rmlewisuk
We're doing everything we can to keep the site up. As said below, the direct
link to the site is [http://justdelete.me](http://justdelete.me)

~~~
cloudwalking
Is this site not completely static?

~~~
rmlewisuk
It wasn't, but it is now.

~~~
hk__2
Since the site doesn’t need anything except a static list in a .json, it would
make sense to use a static website generator (e.g. Jekyll) instead of an
index.php which loads the JSON file.

------
olegp
@rmlewisuk Are you OK with us including this data and a link back to your site
in our web app directory at [https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com)?

Edit: Also, you should try to collaborate with the TOSDR guys, they have a
pretty active IRC channel: #tosdr on Freenode.

------
liquidcool
What's concerning about companies that don't delete user info is that they
don't consider it a liability, or don't believe they can be hacked. If people
tell you to delete their PII and you don't, then lose it, isn't that a lawsuit
waiting to happen?

------
przemoc
Good idea! And don't worry about the name and description, because they're
spot on.

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richardkiss
> JustDelete.Me is a directory of urls to delete your account from web
> services. (Yes, I am aware how terrible that description is. If you’ve got a
> better one, let me know).

How about a variation of "Helping you delete your web accounts"

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d0m
"Make it easy to definitely delete your account from web services."

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rmc
Can't wait for that EU data protection law to come in that will require
services to have a delete option. Self-regulation, as this list shows, isn't
working.

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donniezazen
I find it extremely frustrating that services like Gravatar and forums didn't
inform me that I won't be able to wipe clean my account. It is not acceptable.

~~~
pgeorgi
Especially gravatar which is capable of building a profile across every
website that uses them without caching avatar images locally. Even for non-
users, even retroactively.

There's a reason why I add some "+semirandomstring" to the userpart of my
email address when writing comments (and hope that "helpful" services don't
strip it out before md5'ing it for gravatar).

------
albeertoni
Next step: form letters that make a formal request for the deletion of all
information related to you.

Won't work either but, like this, it's a nice start.

~~~
dredmorbius
There used to be a feature rather much like that on the (now defunct) Internet
Junkbuster site.

A pretty simple set of form letters you could automatically fill out and have
submitted to the major credit bureaus, marketing agencies, and the (then)
handful of companies which maintained active marketing lists.

I printed and mailed a small sheaf of letters based on this during the summer
of 2001. A month or so later, 9/11 hit, followed by the anthrax mailing scare.
I was rather happy to have had far less junk mail to sort through, given the
mood of the times -- every piece of mail not received was one more bit of
dread avoided.

The results of that persisted for _years_. I've also avoided using permanent
change-of-address forms from the USPS (the data from that is used to, you
guessed it, update marketing lists). Having dropped use of credit cards, I've
had no credit report for years (occasionally a minor hassle, but actually
somewhat nice), and what data does exist is a very jumbled scramble of mostly
highly outdated addresses and locations. I prefer it that way.

------
prajit
Type in the Konami Code and see what happens (up, up, down, down, left, right,
left, right, b, a) - an Easter Egg!

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Torn
I'd love to find out how to delete a bitstamp account, there's no links on
their site.

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narcissus
Every time I see these sorts of sites, I just pine even more for the return of
ioptout.ca...

Either way, good job!

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webwanderings
No AOL? It is a pain to delete AOL account.

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gcatalfamo
nice execution!

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jfoutz
Blizzard is challenging too.

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cedel2k1
Please cover ICQ here :-)

~~~
simonswords82
Blimey I didn't know anybody still used ICQ!!

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cremnob
Can you delete a HN account?

~~~
ohwp
You can by sending an email to PG.

~~~
tlrobinson
Will it delete your comments as well?

