I am unhappy with the new Views feature, which is enabled by default. I do not wish to be part of a website that prevents its users from browsing pages anonymously, especially if it also requires them to use their full names.
Can you please delete my Quora account and all associated data as soon as possible, including my public and anonymous answers. Please also send me a confirmation email once this data has been erased.
My account page is located at www.quora.com/XXXXXXXXXXXX.
Quora has processed my deletion request and confirmed that my account has been deleted. Except that not a whole lot was deleted, as far as I can see.
I can still log in.
I left my account logged in and did not deactivate it before sending the request. It looks like most of my details are still intact.
* My name was replaced with User-XXXX, where XXXX is a four-digit integer.
* My followers and the people I'm following were removed
* It looks like the comments that I left on answers have been deleted.
* I'm not sure about things like my biography, country of origin, etc. because I removed those myself first
* I can still see other details such as my edit history and the messages I have exchanged with others.
My answers do not seem to have been deleted.
I'm not 100% sure about this, because I made sure I manually deleted them all myself before asking for my profile to be deleted. But when I view a question I answered, I still have the option of undeleting my answer. Maybe Quora normally permadeletes answers only if they weren't manually deleted first. Maybe they just flag them as deleted like I did manually. I have no idea.
All the questions I had created still exist.
The only questions I was able to delete myself were the ones with no answers on them. The others remain, but with my name scrubbed off them. I find this acceptable and didn't expect Quora to delete other peoples' answers along with my questions.
Ultimately I'm pretty happy with this. I would have preferred to have everything permadeleted, but as long as my answers are no longer visible and my personal informatoin has been scrubbed, I'll leave it at that.
Since this can be turned off in the Quora preferences, you might add an explanation why this is not good enough, e.g. they subverted an expected trust of anonymity by turning a new feature on without asking first, and that defaults matter.
Hi,
Please *delete* all data associated with my account.
My registered email address is: ______________
I would keep my account except there's no way to
actually delete my content and actions myself.
All you can do is *hide* stuff.
I want my stuff *deleted* permanently without a trace.
There are people on the other end of the email who are doing this for some rational reason, not specifically to piss you off. Generally, acting nicely to people you don't know well will get you a lot more than being hostile.
Hi Quora team,
I'm not very happy with the recent changes to privacy settings on Quora and I'd
like to delete my account. My email address is ...
I've heard from others that, in lieu of their account actually being deleted, their
followers and username were just reset. Could you ensure all the content I've
created is fully *deleted and gone from your database*? I'd do it myself but all
you can do is hide it.
Thanks again for your help. It's unfortunate that it's come to this, but I'm just
not at all comfortable with your new policies and so I want to make sure my
persona on the site is truly and completely gone.
Best
(Also, "deleted permanently without a trace." is absolutely impossible in the current age. Even if Quora did manually remove everything from their databases, cache servers, logs, etc, they'd still have to figure out some way to remove it from search engine caches, API clients, and anything else which is, in all actuality, totally beyond their control. Whether regular users realize this or not, as a member of a community called "Hacker News", I fully expect everyone here recognizes the state of things, and the irreversibly of creating something.)
Quora is acting badly. You don't start exposing "views" like this without at the very least warning users in advance, and more reasonably, defaulting to "off" for existing accounts.
You also don't have a "Delete" button that simply hides things. That really is unconscionable. Delete means delete.
I've been on the receiving end of thousands of user emails and that email is not even a 1 on the hostility meter. Personally I tend to appreciate very simple and direct email. The hardest users to help are the ones that aren't clear about what they want.
Okay, "deleting without a trace" probably should be "delete as much data as you possibly can". Remove from backups, archives, caches, do not simply "hide" my data, but delete it permanently. Every service should develop a process for doing this. I've developed this kind of functionality many times, and yes it's a pain, but no it's not particularly hard. Quora is clearly not responsible for Google or any other third-party generally.
You actually have to disable your account and then not log in (logging in re-enables), and then send that email. That's what I had to do when I deleted my account. Not sure if their process has changed since a few months ago when I did it.
In my opinion, it's not enough. It should not be enabled by default, and it should not exist at all. Services like Quora should not introduce changes that compromise the privacy of accounts that already exist. If I hadn't seen this submission on Hacker News, I wouldn't have known about the change.
Completely agree. Facebook paved the way for this bullshit. If they would charge $1/month they would beat Facebook's revenue/user rate and could skip the advertising headaches and the pressure to be slimy.
A huge number of people would drop off of FB, and would never try quora, if they charged. Fewer people on each makes each less useful to each potential new user, and to every existing user, causing more people to drop off.
At some point the pressure is on to join, however, because everybody else is on it. Like having a cell phone: people expect to be able to reach you, so you are pressured into having one (even some old buggers who swore they never would finally succumbed).
So while I agree there would be a loss, I'm not so sure about "huge." Would people be pissed? Yes. Would there be backlash? Absolutely. Would it open the door wider for a competitor? Probably. But they would be making honest money, more than they are now, and could innovate.
I may be wrong about its chances for success, but to me it's not obviously a failing move.
People usually shut down profiles for privacy reasons, so deactivation will rarely be of any use to them; they are better off trying to manually delete their content, while they still have a semblance of write access in that regard.
Deactivation works in some instances on a hypothetical level, but people tend to leave a service, because they don't trust it, which leaves that option moot.
Basically, because this type of maneuver is low and shitty and we can see it
most people won't even know it happened, new users will have to discover by themselves, a lot of people will not like but won't care enough to opt-out, most who really dislike will opt-out and the rest who are actively against it, that are opinionated and will try to shed a light on how unethical and unconsiderate this is and consequently put a bad face on them will be significantly cut down
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Please can you delete my account.
I'm unhappy with your recent changes that would allow anyone to see the topics I follow and read.
My registered account is set up at <email address>
Please can you send me confirmation when you have done this. Many Thanks.
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I've fired an email off. Re: http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-delete-my-Quora-account