Leaving Facebook
Social networking service Facebook says it's making it easier for users to delete their accounts. Until now users could deactivate their accounts, meaning that Facebook would keep customer profiles in their system, but many users found it difficult or impossible to delete their accounts entirely. That prompted a critical piece in the New York Times earlier this week. Now Facebook is making it possible to request account deletion via e-mail.
Vanderbilt University law professor Steven Hetcher says the practice of retaining user-generated content, even when customers want out, has not been exclusive to Facebook. He says YouTube, according to its terms of service, reserves the right to retain user-submitted video clips on its system after users delete them. And he points to a dispute over property rights in the Second Life game, in which a user successfully sued the game maker for improperly confiscating his virtual land.
Hetcher says some Internet companies are abusing consumers' rights, using hard-to-understand terms of service agreements as their weapons. He says those agreements, which customers must accede to before they can create accounts, often hide the truth about data retention practices behind tricky language.
