Cyberclinic: Why won't they let me delete my Facebook page?

How can I escape Facebook? A recent piece in The Independent highlighted some serious cases where social networking websites have compromised people's privacy. Such coverage might be affecting the popularity of these sites; visitors to MySpace are down by 26 per cent from a year ago, and while Facebook numbers are up over a similar period, they're way down from mid-2007, when you couldn't move for people banging on about Super Walls and status updates. But equally, it might be the case that the novelty is wearing off. Since 2001, I've seen Friends Reunited and Friendster come and go, I've become intensely annoyed with MySpace, and Facebook is only hanging on to me by a thread because of Scrabulous.

But have I really had enough? Or am I just waiting for a new social networking site to come along? One thing is clear: these sites have enormous trouble hanging on to users after the initial peak. This week, someone called Em suggested on the Cyberclinic blog: "Anyone who's actually tried using them for a few months knows that this [boredom] happens. Those who paid billions for stock in these companies should have tried signing up and trying it out for themselves first."

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Whatever the cause of the current decline, one consequence is that people don't always find it as easy to untangle themselves. Richard S emailed us, irritated at the tortuously long process of closing a MySpace account; in addition, the process is supposed to end with a confirmation email which delivers the decree absolute – but that email never arrives. He's not the only person in the UK to have this problem – it turns out that, for some unknown reason, you have to click the "MySpace International" link at the bottom of your profile and choose "United States" before you start the whole procedure.

Facebook presents a knottier problem: according to their terms and conditions, you can't actually delete your account, only "deactivate" it – and Facebook keeps hold of all your details for perpetuity. They only agree to cancel your account if you manually delete, one by one, every event, message, Mini-Feed entry and so on that's on your profile – and, as regular users will know, that might take several hours.

While some people are blasé about such personal data (Hobgoblin commented on our blog: "They're welcome to that kind of info on me, it's worth nothing to them anyway"), the fact is that this information is valuable – indeed, the ability to use it to target advertising is what drives many such sites' business plans. While the vast majority of people will have a trouble-free social networking experience, it's just worth bearing in mind that, although you are only posting information for the interest or amusement of your mates, they're not the only ones who are interested in it.

Diagnosis required

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