Yesterday, I begrudgingly decided I’d reactivate my Facebook account, after I had it deleted a few months ago. Without going into why I wanted to re-join, I was shocked when I logged in for the first time after reactivating it — all my personal information was still present. I have a feeling Facebook is breaking a bit more than Canadian law.
When I had my account ‘deleted’ a few months ago, I had the intention of leaving permanently — the fact that I have rejoined is irrelevant — I wanted to purge myself from the world of Facebook for good. However, during the period that I thought I was free, they retained:
- My e-mail address (understandable)
- My name (sort of understandable)
- My avatar
- My birthdate (uh…)
- All the registered applications and their settings (including OAuth associations with external accounts)
- My networks and friends (though my friends had no way to ‘un-friend’ me or view this status during this period)
I would have expected all the above to be purged, and was certainly hoping so when I requested the profile be deleted. I’m going to very strictly limit myself as to how much I post on Facebook in future.
