Of course, they could have saved the previous versions of all profiles. But at least you're making it harder for them to check which version was the "correct" one (i.e. the one that has any value on market of personal profiles for spammers, marketing, etc.)
I want to know the names of assholes in charge of this company so that I can avoid ever working with them.
I agree with nileshtrivedi these Quora guys seem like assholes - that's why I decided to delete my account in the first place.
eharmony -> only cancel membership
match -> only cancel membership
coffee meet bagel -> only cancel membership
truffle -> delete accounts
okcupid -> will delete account
It is not as if I am asking "the internet" to delete my stuff, but "facebook", "google" or "okcupid".
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.
Why do I get the feeling asking Skype to cancel your account immediately puts you into a special watchlist?
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.
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.
The agent kept asking me for personal data such as my birthdate and half the digits of my credit card number. I refused repeatedly (I never recall giving Skype my birthdate in the first place).
Eventually after 55 minutes of discussion, the agent agreed to delete my account if I could provide them 5 of my contacts, the amount of my last bill, and my contact email. Even though you have to be logged in to speak to an agent, and all of these things are fully visible on their website once you are logged in.
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.> 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?
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.
Edit: Also, you should try to collaborate with the TOSDR guys, they have a pretty active IRC channel: #tosdr on Freenode.
How about a variation of "Helping you delete your web accounts"
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).
Won't work either but, like this, it's a nice start.
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.
Either way, good job!