Deleting Website Accounts

[xoxoxoBruce]

PCmag.com has detailed instructions on how to delete accounts from these websites.

Social Networks
Classmates.com, Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, MyLife.com

Online Retailers
Amazon.com, Audible.com, Blockbuster Online, eBay, iTunes, Netflix, PayPal

Blog Services
Blogger, Twitter

Sharing Services
Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube

Online Services
AOL/AIM, Apple's MobileMe, Google, Windows Live ID, Yahoo

[jinx]

Oh, good stuff! Thx bruce.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I figured it might be handy to some folks.

[DanaC]

Bloody hell, good find Bruce! Thanks muchly.

[HungLikeJesus]

But what about the Cellar?

[classicman]

Get banned?

[classicman]

I deleted mine. The reply was that it will be deleted in 14 days. If I activate my account within that time, it will be reinstated. Guess thats for those who might change their mind.

[beauregaardhooligan]

I just tried to login to my YouTube, and they insisted on linking my account to my gmail just to get logged in!
As far as I recall, I had not ever associated the two, but they had my gmail already filled in.
There was no other option to login to YouTube without "linking" the account.
I finally gave in and clicked "link accounts", went straight to my profile and started searching around.
My gmail was not listed as my email.
After much circular searching I finally found an option to separate the accounts.
I separated them, logged out, and tried to log back in.
Same result, you have to link the accounts to log in.
I may just delete *both* accounts.

[Clodfobble]

Google owns YouTube.

[beauregaardhooligan]

So?
What if I don't want Google snooping through my utoob stuff?

[glatt]

then make up a fake e-mail address and a fake youtube account.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by classicman

I deleted mine. The reply was that it will be deleted in 14 days. If I activate my account within that time, it will be reinstated. Guess thats for those who might change their mind.

And, and, and, it's been over 14 days.

[classicman]

Seems to be gone.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cool, so apparently that ones works.

[classicman]

I found this article to be of interest & on topic.

No such thing as "deleted" on the Internet

It's always fun to write about research that you can actually try out for yourself.

Try this: Take a photo and upload it to Facebook, then after a day or so, note what the URL to the picture is (the actual photo, not the page on which the photo resides), and then delete it. Come back a month later and see if the link works. Chances are: It will.

Facebook isn't alone here. Researchers at Cambridge University (so you know this is legit, people!) have found that nearly half of the social networking sites don't immediately delete pictures when a user requests they be removed. In general, photo-centric websites like Flickr were found to be better at quickly removing deleted photos upon request.

Why do "deleted" photos stick around so long? The problem relates to the way data is stored on large websites: While your personal computer only keeps one copy of a file, large-scale services like Facebook rely on what are called content delivery networks to manage data and distribution. It's a complex system wherein data is copied to multiple intermediate devices, usually to speed up access to files when millions of people are trying to access the service simultaneously. (Yahoo! Tech is served by dozens of servers, for example.) But because changes aren't reflected across the CDN immediately, ghost copies of files tend to linger for days or weeks.

In the case of Facebook, the company says data may hang around until the URL in question is reused, which is usually "after a short period of time." Though obviously that time can vary considerably.

Of course, once a photo escapes from the walled garden of a social network like Facebook, the chances of deleting it permanently fall even further. Google's caching system is remarkably efficient at archiving copies of web content, long after it's removed from the web. Anyone who's ever used Google Image Search can likely tell you a story about clicking on a thumbnail image, only to find that the image has been deleted from the website in question -- yet the thumbnail remains on Google for months. And then there are services like the Wayback Machine, which copy entire websites for posterity, archiving data and pictures forever.

The lesson: Those drunken party photos you don't want people to see? Simply don't upload them to the web, ever, because trying to delete them after you sober up is a tough proposition.

Anyone know of this wayback machine?