How do I delete my account?
Just never post again
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I was told that they do not/will not delete accounts. Period. Ever. For any reason. I asked multiple times.
Unfortunately, unless you live in California and can demand it under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you are correct. I’ve read that residents of Colorado and Virginia will get similar rights and protections later this year, and that legislation has been or is being drafted in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Some companies with more respect for their customers, including Netflix, Microsoft, Starbucks and UPS already honor deletion requests from users outside CA. I had hoped the operators of this site would join them in choosing to do the right thing for their users, but apparently not.
In the meantime, the best we can do is pressure our elected officials to recognize that our data is ours and cannot be gathered and held by profiteers against our will.
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Thanks for that news, Alice. Months ago I stopped posting at another (general) forum because even if a Moderator allows deleting an account, all the posted information remains. Users have a very short time, like half an hour, to delete OR just edit posts. After that, it’s there forever. Never had an account at any other site that was so heavily moderated yet users were not allowed to delete or edit their own posts after that brief period.
I just hope that any state or federal laws can be applied to US citizens posting on sites based in other countries.
Meanwhile, I completely stopped posting there, and I visited without logging in exactly once. They sent me an email after the first two weeks suggesting that I come back to post!
Remember this: Posting can be beneficial for either party, or both of them. You, the user, can stop contributing even if the site prohibits removal of your own account or content. Such sites need constant fresh material, which you do not have to provide.
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I don’t care if posts stay alive. I understand a thread would lose context with some comments disappeared. But my personal data should be deleted.
i just went through my chrome security settings and saw that the password for this site was compromised. Then I also realized I actually have 2 accounts (from some years apart). So while changing my password, also wanted to delete on account. I just want to minimize my online exposure to the minimum. Ideally totally delete myself from forums I don’t use anymore.
For a professional forum I had an account with myprivate, and some years later one with my employer email. So I deleted the private one and it just took an email and 2 hours to get confirmation it was deleted. So, I hope the same here.
If just being inactive would delete the account, I can do that. But those accounts seem to stay active forever. I probably still have some accounts from my youth in another country that (don’t even remember username etc.) so it would be nice if there was an automatic de-activation after 5 years or so.
In my opinion the US should adopt something similar to the EU privacy regs, including the right to erasure:
Yes, individual rights to digital privacy would make life more difficult for companies whose business model depends on selling personal info collected without permission (too bad, so sad).
But since the Congress these days is unable to do anything but trash each other, we have to enact legislation state by state.
Mods can’t do it. I checked and saw this: “ Users can’t be deleted if they have posts. Delete all posts before trying to delete a user. (Posts older than 60 days old can’t be deleted.)”
I just deleted a post of mine from August, 2021. At least it disappeared from the thread. However, the prospect of going back and deleting years of post in my case would be a daunting task taking way too much time. I just thought I would actually test it though.