Its privacy policy says that after someone deactivates an account, “removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time." This is absolutely brilliant legal language. What determines a reasonable period of time? A week, month, years? Furthermore, this is supposed to be a service provided by the site. After all, Facebook is saving this in your best interest just in case one decides to reactive their account and their information can be left as it was before. The idea that a user could simply recreate their Facebook profile without the help of Facebook is apparently too much for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. Thus, users are stuck with the annoyance of repetitively messaging Facebook servers with requests for deletion or following steps posted by someone else in order to delete the account.
However, yet again Facebook seems to not be at fault. Users in fact agree to this when they sign up for the site so legally speaking what seems to be the problem? On the outside Facebook presents itself as a useful networking tool and it is. Yet, the more and more I uncover certain dirty facts about it the more I question what other sites are similar with their terms and conditions and no one recognizes it because pictures and private (or lack thereof) information are not being dealt with.
Unfortunately not much can be done unless Facebook begins to abuse this data. But as in many cases, by the time the data is out there, irreparable harm is done to an individual and no monetary settlement or amending of terms and conditions can fix this. So what seems to be the solution? Be careful with what you put on Facebook.
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