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Several commenters on soshable.com and HN say something along the lines of "no biggie - I can just delete my profile when FB becomes a problem."

But here's the thing: You probably can't delete your profile. As far as I remember, Facebook didn't even have a deletion feature in the beginning, only a deactivation feature.

Now there's a deletion feature, but can you be absolutely sure that FB doesn't save your info even if they tell you your profile has been deleted?

Think I'm paranoid? Think again: Several times I've tried deleting status updates, and while I get a deletion confirmation, some or all of the "deleted" status messages show up again some time later.



FB became a problem for me some time ago, and I soft-deleted (deactivated) my account. There is a deletion feature now.

There's a big difference between a bug in the deletion of status updates right now, and permanent deletion which takes a couple days. Tape backups will always be around, though.


Sure, but my point is that you can't know for sure whether Facebook will actually delete your profile even if they say they have.

"They trust me - dumb fucks" - Mark Zuckerberg




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