AccountKiller.com says it is a website dedicated to helping social network users reclaim their personal data. The website helps users reclaim their personal data by explaining and ranking social networking sites. The website explains how to delete online accounts and ranks them by how hard it is to reclaim your personal information.
AccountKiller provides instructions to remove your account or public profile on most popular websites, including Skype, Facebook, Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN, Twitter, Google (GOOG), and many more.
The creators of AccountKiller have also created a blacklist of sites that do not allow their users to reclaim their online account information. According to the website a black-listed site indicates it’s probably impossible or highly difficult to get rid of your account. Among the sites AccountKiller has blacklisted are:
The grey-listed sites may cost you some irritation or effort – but it should be possible to terminate your online accounts says AccountKiller. These sites will require you need to send a mail to the site, send a message using a webform or even call them to recover your personal information.
The creators of AccountKiller say that social media sites purposely make it difficult or even impossible to delete your account for two reasons. First, because they are profiting from their users’ data. These sites are in the business of data customer retention. Alternatively, they suggest that these developers may simply be ignorant, lazy, or incompetent, i.e. not being able to create some account deletion function.
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Kudos to the creators of AccountKiller, I now recommend this site to anyone who has questions about these social networking sites. It is time for social networking sites to provide transparency into their real business model, data collection, otherwise, there could be a social networking bubble.
What do you think?
Do you know how to get out of your social networking sites? Can you?
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.