
Can I delete my Skype account? - Splendor
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA142/can-i-delete-my-skype-account
======
taspeotis
As far as I know this is about the same process for HN?

[http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-hacker-news-
account](http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-hacker-news-account)

~~~
buro9
Nearly all forums do this or some form of this.

Your account and personal information may be deleted, but all of your
comments, submissions, conversations, threads or whatever you call the
collected bulk of user generated content will remain.

The reason for this is that a forum is a collaborative effort, a collective
work, and the contributions of other people's content might only make sense in
the context of yours.

The general stance is that a conversation is an audited history, and to change
the historical record affects other people's content too by redefining the
context.

Taking this very conversation as an example if you deleted your account and
your comment, mine now makes far less sense.

Most forum admins agree that you have the right to edit your content, but not
to modify/affect someone else's. Changing the historical record affects the
content of others.

Thus, most forums will ask for the right to reproduce your user content even
after your account has been deleted. This preserves the context of other
people's content.

Beyond that... account deletion. The internals of most forum software is based
on foreign keys or data structures that presume integrity of the data. To
delete a user account whilst retaining the content created by the account
breaks their software.

So for a lot of forums deleting a user actually means keeping the user record
but scrubbing it of identifiable information. The problem then comes that
whilst the account may no longer exist in a meaningful sense, the content
might still have personal identifiable information and will now be orphaned
and detached from any meaningful record of ownership. Liability just became a
nightmare for the forum admin.

The question of how to handle work contributed to a collective work that is a
forum is a sticky one. But ultimately the value of the forum to the people who
will continue to use it is based on the collective work remaining intact. The
content will always survive, and then it's just implementation that dictates
what deletion of an account really means for the given piece of software.

~~~
cliveowen
I believe users should always be in control of their data (and since it's been
produced by them, it _their_ data). Also, if their software breaks after
deleting an account the problem is entirely on their part.

~~~
buro9
> I believe users should always be in control of their data

Total control?

Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even
though by doing so they delete your data?

Do other users have the right to delete your data?

Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this
conversation.

Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context
surrounding it?

If you posted "I vote for this too" to some very sound proposal to allow
changing of usernames, and then the original author changed the proposal to
"Bestiality should be legal", thus suggesting to the world you support such a
thing... did the other user have right through the control of their data to
substantial modify the context of your data? To the point that the other
person could create a personal liability for you?

Where do the lines start and end, if your content can stand alone then the
issues are not there. Almost everything in a forum is a discussion,
conversation, argument, debate, an interaction depending on the context of
other people's content. The minutes of those things are a record of fact, that
someone said something and someone else replied and said something else.
Content on a forum is never detached from the content of others.

I agree you have the right to your data, but disagree someone has the right to
modify those minutes, those records of fact, to impact the data of other
people in any way.

A forum is a collective work, and the rules for a collective work are
different to the rules of a personal work.

~~~
eik3_de
I agree that posts shouldn't be deleted. But should the user be able to
anonymize his posts when he deletes his account? Such that the username
'JohnDoe' is replaced with 'DeletedUser20140405.42'. IMO that doesn't destroy
the readability of the conversation.

~~~
buro9
That's where we're going with Microcosm.

Deleting a user will nuke the account itself, and assign all content owned by
that account to an anonymous/deleted account.

The context is preserved and no-one else's data is affected, but we've removed
all Googleable trace of the original account (the username and profile).

The only remaining issue is whether a person made posts containing personal
information (defined as being the same as personal data according to EU Data
Protection laws... name, phone number, email, etc). But for that we'll always
honour take-down requests even when the information is orphaned from an
ownership record.

PS: To the downvoters, I'd love to understand what part is objectionable.

~~~
levosmetalo
> PS: To the downvoters, I'd love to understand what part is objectionable.

I didn't downvote you before, but just did it now.I automatically downvote all
comments complaining about downvotes unless the discussion topic is about
downvoting and upvoting. I just think that it dilutes discussion.

------
lyndonh
Skype as software has a lot of issues. Before they were bought by Microsoft
the software worked quite well; on my Mac I'm still running an ancient
version. Why ? - it got replaced by a version that takes up half your screen,
I think they were trying to make a single version for desktop and iPad. After
a public outcry they reduced the size somewhat. The latest version has about 3
extra options about the amount of data you will be sharing with
Microsoft/associate companies. What ? I want a phone service, I don't want my
personal info datamined. OK, they give you the option to disable this but it
doesn't fill me with confidence.

If you want to use Windows 8 Metro version you _must_ "link" to a Microsoft
account and change your login to use that method. It's the first thing that it
does, but the UI is very subtle about it. IIRC, it even wants to change your
desktop login settings. Phone software should not be changing system settings.
Also the latest version removes the option to hide the fact that you have a
webcam. With Skype you absolutely must read all the fine print and dialogues.

~~~
laurent123456
Exactly, ever since Microsoft took over Skype definitely went downhill.

Another "feature" they've recently added is that it's impossible to actually
logout of Skype [1]. Even if you close Skype on all your devices, logout
everywhere, your friends will still see you online. I even uninstalled the
client from all my machines but was still online after that.

The official response is that it's how it should work, that Skype is like a
phone and people should be able to send you messages and call you at any time.
Of course ignoring the fact that people get upset when they see you online and
you're not answering their messages and calls.

Since November last years, there have been quite a few complaints about this
but nothing has changed so far.

[1] [http://community.skype.com/t5/Mac/I-show-up-as-Online-
when-I...](http://community.skype.com/t5/Mac/I-show-up-as-Online-when-I-m-
not/td-p/2071155)

------
emeraldd
Here's a question, would actually deleting the account lead to the possibility
of someone later impersonating the original account holder? Especially since
the "buddy" lists appear to be independent?

~~~
kintamanimatt
The way a lot of other sites do it is to disallow new accounts to be created
with the same username as a deleted account. Reddit does it like this.

~~~
toufka
What then happens when the site ages significantly? Pulling a Yahoo is pretty
scary in my mind. I'm still curious about how those with common, re-purposed
emails have fared since yahoo reset all their unused accounts.

------
oakwhiz
If you contact Skype's support, they can actually delete your account
directly, but before they do that, they ask you to replace your profile
information with gibberish.

~~~
GauntletWizard
And I bet if you search that gibberish, it still shows up. And I bet if you
recover account on that, it'll still work. Likely, all they're doing is
changing the password.

------
granttimmerman
This is extremely relevant:

[http://justdelete.me/](http://justdelete.me/)

~~~
eik3_de
It's a great service, I just added Lobsters. Adding a service takes 2 minutes,
using the online editor from github that automatically creates a pull request
etc.

Edit: and already merged & deployed less than an hour later. Contributing is
fun :)

~~~
rmlewisuk
You caught me on a good day for merging pull requests ;) thanks for the
contribution, always appreciated :)

------
kristiandupont
I don't know, is this a problem? In some sense, it seems more honest to me
than having a delete button that simply sets a "deleted" flag on you in a
database.

~~~
grrowl
It's representative of the values they hold as a company. If you can't be
bothered allowing your users' control over their own data, it says a lot about
their deeper intentions.

~~~
if_by_whisky
Most companies give you less control though. Setting a deleted flag is worse,
isn't it?

~~~
Kequc
There is a certain accountability that is assumed after I delete my account
for that account not to show up again somewhere some time. If all they do is
set a flag in a database maybe that's good enough. But if they wanted to go
further maybe they could scrub the data associated with it too. But that
shouldn't be my domain, that should be their domain to take these measures. I
should simply have to state my intention.

------
acjduncan
This is completely insane. How can a company with so many developers think
this is anything other than completely unacceptable.

~~~
cyphax
I think they find it acceptable because, well, people seem to be accepting it.
The majority doesn't seem to be interested in deleting any accounts but simply
abandon them. I do wonder why Microsoft/Skype prefers accounts not be deleted,
though? Message history perhaps? When designing databases, this is a matter
that's important: do you delete objects or do you flag them deleted to prevent
holes in the related data? Obviously I've no idea if that's what is going on
at all, but who knows. :)

------
officialjunk
and none of that is to actually delete the account. the closest thing is to
remove your name from the directory...

------
emersonrsantos
You never put information online, delete stuff, use anonymous accounts and
VPNs, yet everyone is a victim of device fingerprinting tecnhiques. That's one
way the governments finds "anonymous" TOR users.

Check the online test
[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/) and the paper
[https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-
uniqueness.pdf](https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf) for a
good read.

------
jon_black
The question I'm more interested in is why a sane delete option isn't built
into the service. On the other hand, it's at least _clear_ that your account
exists forever, although it would be better if people were aware of that
during sign up. Twitter claims to have deleted my account, but I cannot verify
it.

As a side note, amazon affiliate accounts are equally bad.

~~~
ss64
Presumably if you have an account JohnSmith, that will be held locally on the
computers of all your contacts, if the account was deleted and someone else
registered a new JohnSmith account then your old contacts could end up calling
a complete stranger.

Microsoft could have some process that records dead accounts and automatically
deletes them from the contact lists of the billions of computers running
skype, but imagine the problems when someone deletes their account by mistake
(or has it hijacked and deleted by a third party) and wants it restored.

Now the better approach might be to associate each JohnSmith account with a
unique ID that never gets recycled and then reject calls unless the
account_IDs match. But that's probably a lot of re-engineering that they don't
want to do.

~~~
jon_black
I don't think the reason is to prevent accidental/destructive deletion. There
are better ways to do that such as providing a grace period; allowing users to
download their account data for a future re-signup; and two-factor
authentication.

It's more likely that the revenue earned by the service is heavily dependent
on building a social profile. A properly deleted (without a trace) account
reduces the profile accuracy. I also wouldn't rule out the almost too obvious
government surveillance requirement.

------
JBiserkov
Mandatory Dilbert
[http://dilbert.com/2013-11-06/](http://dilbert.com/2013-11-06/)

(hint: even closing the thing is not straight-forward)

------
asadlionpk
Maybe this is because of the way they store the data. It might be an expensive
query (in their case) to search all contact lists with your skypeID, and
remove it.

~~~
shoq
That just means, that they are too lazy to implement a delete queue or
something. What's more likely is, that they audit and persist profile changes
to gather data even if you "deleted" your account.

------
notfoss
I like what GitHub does with a deleted account:

[https://github.com/ghost](https://github.com/ghost)

------
monsterix
I recently deleted my Linkedin account. But their junk emails continue to
dirty my email even now. Next in the line is Skype, and then probably
Facebook.

Thankfully, I never shared my genuine data with Facebook or opened an a/c on
Instagram or Whatsapp ever so I'm good at a certain level when it comes to
Facebook.

In my opinion Twitter is the only option that is sane at the moment.

~~~
okasaki
username+whatever@gmail.com is delivered to username@gmail.com, so if you add
the service name when you sign up it's very easy to block unwanted traffic. It
also tells you which service sold your email to spammers.

~~~
icebraining
Unless the spammers simply run remove the extra part from the address. A
better way is to get your own domain and use a different alias for each
service.

~~~
__david__
I've been doing the + thing for more than 10 years now. My observation is that
spammers simply don't remove it (it's just not worth their time).

More importantly, legit services that are on the spammy side (or have broken
unsubscribe links) will absolutely never remove it.

Back a few years when Ameritrade had a bunch of its user's emails sold to
spammers, I just changed my email on the ameritrade website and started
blocking my +ameritrade address. It worked like a charm.

------
joelthelion
Very professional

------
cshimmin
I guess Betteridge's law of headlines could have saved me from reading this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

~~~
kintamanimatt
And as a result you'd have missed out on Skype's tap dancing and sidestepping
around the issue. This submission also promotes a key issue: your Skype
account is for life, or at least until Skype becomes passé and irrelevant, and
shuts down.

