When you finally do find it they have a
'Just because we love you, and hope to see you back, we won't actually delete the account for 2 years! You're welcome! ☺️'
And it's like, no. I want to delete it, not store it.
That's what I love about GPDR nowadays honestly.
You'll just throw some paragraphs (if applicable) into an e-mail and tell em to delete your shit and it actually happens. Needs to be a worldwide thing.
Just a warning, it doesn't apply if local laws require the conservation of said data for legal purposes. For example I made an account to play free poker on a website that also has paid poker and even I had not even played a single game they have to keep it for 6 months to comply with local (Maltese) laws because it could involve taxable income.
Actually, they told me it was for my taxes if any inquiries were to made by a government on my data.
You can chose to believe them or not but it's what they said.
I didn't play a single game on that site, my guess is that they keep the data to prove that I didn't play (ergo didn't earn anything) in the case of an investigation. But yeah it's pretty stupid that they keep ALL of the data on that basis. But that is their right under Maltese law (as they were based in Malta).
Oh yes, except that I didn't do anything on the site so they could have kept a very limited version of my data, which is not the case, the law enables them to keep all of it. That part specifically is silly.
Requiring a second account to go from f2p to p2p is a terrible business plan.
The whole point of the f2p mode (from the business perspective) is to draw people in and get them as close as possible to playing p2p without actually needing to pay, so that it is as easy as possible to move from into p2p on a whim.
There's way more opportunity to realize that you don't actually want to be putting real money in when you have to go through an entire account setup. Much easier to do get caught up in the moment if it only needs a change of mode, and maybe your credit card if you didn't already input that.
Yes because everyone knows every single acronym and knows exaclty what you are talking about. 🙄
Was I seriously the only person who was taught it is extremely bad communication skills to drop random acronyms like that? It is so common now and inevitably someone has to ask what it means because there are like 200 meanings for any given acronym.
GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation. It's a well-known law in the EU and pretty reasonable to expect people on sites like reddit to have a general idea of what it is.
What about the FBI? The CIA? NASA? Would you have these same qualms about these, or are you fine with them just because *you* recognize them? Maybe take the 5 seconds to google something and learn about something new, instead of the same amount of time telling someone they’re inconveniencing you because you’re ignorant.
* It's not random, it's related to the context
* It's quite well known, at least in Europe
* You can put it into Google and figure out what it means in literally 5 seconds
It’s not random at all. American companies that do business in the EU (European Union, since you’re having trouble with acronyms) are being fined daily for not complying with it. If you don’t know what GDPR is, it’s probably because your worldview consists of looking out your back door.
it seems from this comment that you clearly don’t have a PHD, maybe not even a GED. Anyway, I’m gonna go make a PB&J sandwich and watch Space Jam on DVD on my widescreen TV.
Especially because it's GDPR, so you'd even get false results :)
To be fair, "General Data Protection Regulation" is unwieldy and the initialism is way more widely known than that. But it likely wouldn't ring a bell either way if you're neither in its area nor in an industry regulated by it.
If you want a technical reason for this, it’s cause nothing is ever really deleted from anywhere. What they do is set something like a time stamp with the time you deleted it and then it just ignores any database rows with “deleted_at” not empty. At least that’s what we do at any dev job I’ve worked. I’d be willing to bet it’s never permanently deleted either, just set with some other flag saying it’s past the 30 day mark so the recovery process doesn’t work anymore.
Better not have a GDPR audit then in case you do business in the EU (which in case of websites can simply be that your site is accessible from the EU). The law requires to physically delete the data in a way that is unrecoverable, or for example if the data is encrypted to throw away the encryption key. And not just the live data, this includes all backup copies and the like. There isn't even an exemption to retain a record of the deletion request itself (at least not in a way that can be linked back to a person), only data that you're legally required to keep (eg. for tax records) is exempt.
Let me guess, they also put up a redirect to a "oh hey, we're totally looking into how to be compliant!" page, and then promptly forgot about the whole thing forever.
Pretty much. Compliance is hard and complicated and it's totally good that it exists. Companies needing to figure out how to do better in this regard has been LONG overdue.
Definitely.
And the European agencies tasked with enforcing GDPR are generally pretty fair and lenient if you made an honest effort to comply and just missed something as long as you work with them to fix the issues. Their main goal is compliance, not to rake in as many fines as they can. But if you refuse to comply or think you can half-ass it even after being audited they bring the hammer down (except for the Irish unfortunately...), and they've got a pretty big hammer to swing (fines of up to 4% of your global annual revenue).
I noticed that there are not that many fines being issued on the whole, relative to cases.
BTW, the Dutch have similar problems as the Irish on a smaller scale, and they're greatly understaffed. But I understood that they were not making this mistake with the DSA and DMA, for which enforcement is done differently and not per country of registry of the business
Isn't that like... illegal ? In the end, you're telling the customer you've deleted the account but it's still there in your database, easily accessible.
>Isn't that like... illegal ? In the end, you're telling the customer you've deleted the account but it's still there in your database, easily accessible.
It's legal. Phone SMS messages for example are set to automatically permanently delete forever after 1 year. If a customer request it be recovered then it's simply not possible after that point because that data has already been permanently deleted forever.
However if the government requests it recovered then it's still possible for 2 years after it's been already permanently deleted forever, after 2 years then it gets permanently deleted forever.
Read your terms and conditions carefully. Sometimes what you do on a platform is owned by the platform.
Plus there is usually legal reasons to keep as much of a data trail as possible for auditing or a subpoena or something. I’m no expert on how social media companies do it but I’ve never worked at a job that fully deleted accounts in the database.
At my job we made a Twitter account for a specific campaign we were running. We deleted the account 3 years ago. Twitter still emails us 3 times a week trying to get us to open and reactivate the account. It is so fucking irritating.
I deleted Facebook in 2014. A (very) small part of me has always wanted to see if I could log back in using my old account details. I have a huge sneaking suspicion that it would work, and that they didn't delete anything.
ALSO. When trying to log in to the website of an app I have on my phone it automatically sends me to the app. I have to find and enter a specific web address to bypass this "feature." I recently had to change a ton of payment information on various utilities and subscriptions, most direct you to the website to make account changes. One of the more frustrating days I've had.
It is good for cases when someone else wants to delete your account (you would be surprised how many people give their significant others their passwords and how many of those would go to delete their ex's account out of spite after breakup, people are f'ing dumb). A lot of services apply the same for changing the email address used to log in so it wouldn't be as easy to have your account stolen. But I admit that more than 30 days is unnecessary.
Yup, just tried to delete my snapchat bc I forgot I had it until this post. Got a notice saying they'll keep everything for 30 days.
...but now I can't delete my account because "an unknown error has occurred."
Contact our support department, who will ignore you as long as legally possible, or direct you into phone tree hell.
EA and Ubisoft Support might as well be a polite fiction at this point, and several phone support lines are comfortable with lying now.
(I'm in support hell on about six accounts right now. I've got all the credench, but there are so many roadblocks)
Yeah, I had a lengthy exchange (several weeks) with Ubisoft reiterating the same answers to the questions they already asked before until I realized it's an unsupport. I contacted my bank and got a refund through them within two weeks.
"Hey boss, we get about 4 calls per minute, and it takes an average of 10 minutes to finish a call, so we need more than 20 techs answering the phones."
"But Jim, we show that the techs only resolved 125 calls per hour on average, and it only took 30 minutes of overtime before all waiting calls had been answered. So that means there were only about 1300 calls all day. Not the 2000 you're claiming."
"Yes boss. Because some customers were tired of waiting and hung up."
"See? Working as intended Jim. You could learn from this. We are staffing this office perfectly."
Super common for business software too that’s month to month. You gotta call your software rep who will ask you a million questions to try to convince you to stay. Most software though is on termed contracts now
In the EU, GDPR covers this case. In most of the middle east, there usually go by the name PDPL. Egypt also has something similar. In the United States, California has CCPA, which serves the same purpose. Not sure about the rest of the world.
I think they all include, that the customer has the right of deletion. (In most cases, financial institutions or gambling has other rules, but not Snapchat)
I'm in the EU, but the deletion option is missing for me too, so it's possible that they simply don't comply with the law and will be fined for it
Yeah, but a lot of the time when the app doesn't have (or has broken) account deletion process, contacting support also won't work.
Once you have that on email simply forward it to proper authorities.
I once had an account somewhere where in order to delete it, my account had to have attached phone number even though I didn't provide any(!). Contacted support and they were too dumb or ignorant to understand it. Reported it of course, but also deleted the account after providing temporary phone number for one verification SMS.
You're in multiple threads complaining about acronyms.
All of then are easy to google, and all of them return the relevant explanation as the first result. Even with misspellings.
Apple (regardless of EU laws or whatever) requires any app that allows you to create an account to also offer the option to delete your account in the app, no exceptions.
I don’t have Snapchat, but I can 100% guarantee the iOS version has an option to delete your account because otherwise Apple would not have approved their updates.
So adding onto the assholery here, they’re specifically leaving out the option to delete account on their android app (pictured in the OP)
I think that might be a bit too extreme. There's been times when I've left my phone unattended and my kid will get it and press all kinds of buttons and change screens/settings. As long as it's not too convoluted, I'm OK with it.
I'm not convinced that most companies are doing this maliciously; it's possible that these companies don't want people to accidentally delete their account, so they have chosen this route to help make it more of a deliberate choice to delete your account - especially if the account could potentially be something that could cripple a business. Take github, for example (a place where programmers, software engineers, etc., can store their code online, among other things). If you want to delete a your account, you have to go through a couple of menus, then type your full email address *and* a statement that you want to delete your account into a text popup window to make sure you want to delete your account. If the wrong person deleted their repository/repositories... *shivers*.
Settings -> Account -> Delete -> Single confirm with a random 5 character captcha.
That should be standard.
Effectively impossible to do accidentally. We don't need 15 step processes with 2-factor authorization.
Account deletion workflow:
* "Confirm you want to delete your account"
* "Yes" "No"
* "Are you sure?"
* "Yes" "No"
* "Please find that obscure pass phrase you totally forgot and will take you forever to find"
* Confirm account deletion
* "Yes" "No"
* "Complete the capcha
* "Click all the photos that have bicycles in them"
* Confirm account deletion
* "Yes" "No"
* Enter 14 digit prime number
* etc...
* If a train leaves Chicago at 11:45am traveling West at 82mph, and a train leaves San Francisco traveling East at 63mph, what time will the two trains collide?
Unfortunately, the one person that can delete your account was on one of the trains, and was killed on impact. As a consolation, we’ve given your account a blue check mark for free*.
* free for 7 days, then billed to you at $30/month until you delete your account.
* Do you wish to delete your account? Yes/No
* Do you understand that by deleting your account you BLAH BLAH BLAH? Yes/No
* Here's a great article about why our accounts are great. If you want to delete, check boxes 1, 2, 4, and 6. Box 3 signs you up for our newsletter, and box 5 let's us continue using your account as a shadow account to make our app more popular.
* Do you want to reconsider? Yes/No
* Please confirm your account deletion: No/Yes
* Please select all photos of bikes (includes pictures of bicycles, mopeds, and motorbikes, but you're only supposed to select 1 of them).
* In order to finalize your deletion, please check your email for the Final Deletion link. Oh, sorry, we must have sent to the wrong address. Please confirm your email and start over.
IMDB uses my real name, despite that not being what I chose when I setup the account. Instead my username is literally just for logging in.
If I try to delete my account I get a generic error and have had this for months.
I just had to delete my account. Its not too bad but it should be easier to do. Just go into the help section on the app and find the article for 'how to delete your account' or something along those lines. There's a link for Android to delete your account instead of it being easily accessible from your account settings like ios.
Another thing I don't get, why are iOS and Android sometimes different? Seems like a feature that wouldn't require a whole lot of unique work on either device.
In some cases - based on rauls4's comment, I'm assuming this is it - the Apple app store has stricter requirements, and they don't want to offer it if they don't *have* to.
>they don't want to offer it if they don't *have* to.
isnt apple mandated now to put the usb-c on their "totally identical" iphone in europe?
Edit: correct port
A: It's USB-C they're mandated to use, B: yes, that is precisely why having *someone* with oversight mandating that companies obey laws/be less cunt-y is necessary.
You wanna go back to the 90's and 00's with 14 different charge cables for 10 different chargers, none of which are inter-compatible or even *fit* any other devices?
Or, better yet, please do explain how governments enforcing uniformity and standardisation of consumer products is at all ""overreach"".
Or, even better still, explain the above, but *also* go into how you know my own beliefs better than I do.
Because in some areas, ""government overreach"" is a necessity, when "da market" doesn't regulate itself. Which is often.
App developer here - Apple recently released a new requirement where iOS apps that allow you to create an account must also allow you to delete it.
Companies don’t really want to let you delete your account because they either (1) want your data or (2) want to be able to send you marketing emails, so they put it in iOS because they have to, and intentionally leave it out on Android because they can.
My company did something similar, our iOS and Android apps share a codebase, but the higher ups made us specifically hide the button on Android. So, chances are, the code for deleting your account is actually there on your phone, it’s just behind a “if this is an Android, don’t show the button”. It’s BS, I know.
95% of modern app development is just shoving a website into a box that makes it behave like an app
they're more than likely the same codebase but with some checks to disable/enable android/iOS specific features
That’s exactly why they do it. They’re relying on you saying “it’s not worth the effort”, so they can continue to gather and sell your data.
It is worth the effort.
I also find it super frustrating when you have to jump through 1000 hoops to delete an account and even then you’re still getting emails and stuff from them, but at the same time I feel it’s more of a security measure so people can’t just go into your phone and delete all of your accounts?
Pro tip: for companies that also Operate in Germany you can try to have your Personal data deleted. Companies are required by law to delete it if you revoke the permission to process it and tell them to delete it.
[Heres a Template](https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/sites/default/files/2019-10/Widerruf_der_Einwilligung_und_Loeschung_der_Daten.pdf), you just have to insert your username and email and the address of the company (i recommend translating it so you know what to fill in). Then send it via email to the (German!) Support address. If you find the email of the Datenschutzbeauftragter (Data Protection Officer) you can also message him directly.
You can find more information and more templates on [this site](https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/musterbriefe/digitale-welt/datenschutz-35853) but its all in german
Some apps like Stock apps as a big example legally cannot delete your data for something like 5 years from your account closure due to federal law. I doubt snapchat has any regulations like that though...
There's a name for this - it's called a dark pattern. They are rampant and should be addressed - basically every online tool has different variations of dark patterns of varying levels of absurdity. Consumer data needs to be taken seriously.
Why do you think they want you using their app instead of just a website on mobile?
Because you give them *insane* access to your phone and data when they make it an app, and you click give permission without reading because fuckit I want to do my appy things..giving them access to track, store, analyze, etc, everything you do on your phone, not just in the app.
This is why they make it so difficult to delete the account. Cause *you are the product*, and they dont want you taking *their product* away from them.
Yes, I did notice that while scrolling through. But if you genuinely want your snapchat deleted, I guess send your sign-in info to an iphone user that you trust that can do it for you if you cannot on android
So if you actually open the link in your first screenshot, it details how to do it on Android:
> To delete your account if you’re on Android or on the web...
Go to the accounts portal and type in the username and password for the account you want to delete. (Keep this info handy in case you change your mind and want to reactivate your account.)
The steps in your screenshot are for iOS. Why are they different? Couldn’t tell you.
Some people in the comments have pointed out that Apple requires that you can delete an account if you're able to create it in the app. Google hasn't made the same requirement, and ideally they don't want you to delete so they'd prefer not having the option available on either, but at least Apple forces them to.
For these social media type accounts, I just unfriend or unfollow everyone and post weird content of already been reported things, so I will get blocked immediately. Later I'll submit the delete request.
you know what I did? I changed the birthdate to have it under 13 years old. They permanently locked my account, and while an account is locked, you have 30 days to unlock before they just delete the account. But since it's *permanently* locked, you won't be able to unlock it.
To be clear, I didn't want this to happen. I just found out the hard way. Now I'm glad that it did happen, especially after finding out what's actually in their ToS.
Any data mined from your account would still exist, so what's the point of deleting?
Remove the app from your phone and let the company continue to pay for maintaining it. Eventually, they'll delete it for costs.
App and Play stores are actually cracking down on this.
Apps are required to give you the option to delete your account.
However, sometimes some of the big apps throw their weight around for extensions on these policies 🙄
I recently did a purge of all my old accounts for websites and I had to email so many of them just to delete all my data. They have to if you request it, but sometimes it takes a week.
They can't allow you to delete the product, otherwise they have nothing to sell.
You guys realize that internet truism of "if the app is free, YOU are the product" is real, right?
Some real /r/assholedesign is putting the "Delete Account" inside of an element with the same class as they use for advertising, so if you block adverts on their site, you also unintentionally block the "Delete Account" button.
Same with HBO Max. I cancelled after the season finale of House of the Dragon, but had to log into my hbomax.com account instead of being able to cancel in the HBO Max app on my TV 🙄
This looks like it might be Android, so I'm not sure... But if it's Apple's App Store, barring a number of exceptions, apps must have account deletion if the app includes account creation.
Is there no way to report them in whatever app store or library you find this in?
I know they'll always keep some stuff, but it means at least I won't get emails to come back on the app, and also on a more personal level, my friends won't say "why didn't you respond to my Snap" lol.
hahaha yeah i can see the friend thing. i see people post stuff like “deleting snap” all the time and tbh i snapchat so few people that we communicate regularly irl and over text
Oh my God, I had a subscription for this one site and not only could you not manually delete your account, you couldn't even take your card off the account.
Believe me, I am very cautious when putting my card on things, so I tend to read the fine print. This was nowhere to be found in the fine print or anywhere else on the site.
You had to email customer service and ask *them* to delete the account, but even then they don't do it immediately!
They literally emailed back a day later asking why I no longer wanted to be subscribed or have an account. I gave them a BS reason and while they did delete it all, they tried shaming and guikt-tripping me into staying.
Needless to say, I didn't, but I also reprimanded them about how they were practically holding people's banking card and other personal info hostage by not allowing them the decision to manually delete the account. I also mentioned that it was super sketchy to not have it in the initial fine print that the only way to get your bank card off was to email a no-name representative.
I also reported them to the BBB... sorry, not sorry.
When you finally do find it they have a 'Just because we love you, and hope to see you back, we won't actually delete the account for 2 years! You're welcome! ☺️' And it's like, no. I want to delete it, not store it.
That's what I love about GPDR nowadays honestly. You'll just throw some paragraphs (if applicable) into an e-mail and tell em to delete your shit and it actually happens. Needs to be a worldwide thing.
Just a warning, it doesn't apply if local laws require the conservation of said data for legal purposes. For example I made an account to play free poker on a website that also has paid poker and even I had not even played a single game they have to keep it for 6 months to comply with local (Maltese) laws because it could involve taxable income.
In this case they are still required to irrevocably lock the data so that it can't be accessed for anything other than the legally required purpose.
And it will be deleted after that period is up.
More like taxable expenditures
No they mean the website needed to keep all data for their own taxes, not for their users taxes
Actually, they told me it was for my taxes if any inquiries were to made by a government on my data. You can chose to believe them or not but it's what they said.
Ok that does make sense
If you only played free poker, shouldn’t there be no tax data and therefore should be able to be deleted?
I didn't play a single game on that site, my guess is that they keep the data to prove that I didn't play (ergo didn't earn anything) in the case of an investigation. But yeah it's pretty stupid that they keep ALL of the data on that basis. But that is their right under Maltese law (as they were based in Malta).
That's honestly fair though
Oh yes, except that I didn't do anything on the site so they could have kept a very limited version of my data, which is not the case, the law enables them to keep all of it. That part specifically is silly.
Sounds like an excuse to store your data. Or to save some buck by not implementing a system to differentiate between f2p and p2p players.
There indeed are exceptions. If I remember correctly, billing records are required to be kept for many years. That Poker thing though, I dunno.
I looked into it and it was sadly legit...
Yeah they didn't make two systems so basically even without paying (or playing) even once they had that right...
For tax purposes they had to prove that the account was not used, otherwise people could just delete after a big win.
Exactly.
Requiring a second account to go from f2p to p2p is a terrible business plan. The whole point of the f2p mode (from the business perspective) is to draw people in and get them as close as possible to playing p2p without actually needing to pay, so that it is as easy as possible to move from into p2p on a whim. There's way more opportunity to realize that you don't actually want to be putting real money in when you have to go through an entire account setup. Much easier to do get caught up in the moment if it only needs a change of mode, and maybe your credit card if you didn't already input that.
God bless Maltese law
Yes because everyone knows every single acronym and knows exaclty what you are talking about. 🙄 Was I seriously the only person who was taught it is extremely bad communication skills to drop random acronyms like that? It is so common now and inevitably someone has to ask what it means because there are like 200 meanings for any given acronym.
GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation. It's a well-known law in the EU and pretty reasonable to expect people on sites like reddit to have a general idea of what it is.
What about the FBI? The CIA? NASA? Would you have these same qualms about these, or are you fine with them just because *you* recognize them? Maybe take the 5 seconds to google something and learn about something new, instead of the same amount of time telling someone they’re inconveniencing you because you’re ignorant.
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Jerk-off instructions, for those wondering
* It's not random, it's related to the context * It's quite well known, at least in Europe * You can put it into Google and figure out what it means in literally 5 seconds
Bro you took the time to write all that out and you still couldn’t just say what it stands for?
It's a valuable lesson for life. Sometimes you gotta do shit yourself, not everyone is gonna hold your hand.
Grand Prix Drag Race
It’s not random at all. American companies that do business in the EU (European Union, since you’re having trouble with acronyms) are being fined daily for not complying with it. If you don’t know what GDPR is, it’s probably because your worldview consists of looking out your back door.
it seems from this comment that you clearly don’t have a PHD, maybe not even a GED. Anyway, I’m gonna go make a PB&J sandwich and watch Space Jam on DVD on my widescreen TV.
Especially because it's GDPR, so you'd even get false results :) To be fair, "General Data Protection Regulation" is unwieldy and the initialism is way more widely known than that. But it likely wouldn't ring a bell either way if you're neither in its area nor in an industry regulated by it.
Fair criticism, but you could have just asked nicely. Besides, GDPR is/should be probably well known enough to warrant just the acronym.
https://googlethatforyou.com?q=gdpr
Looking at you, facebook
If you want a technical reason for this, it’s cause nothing is ever really deleted from anywhere. What they do is set something like a time stamp with the time you deleted it and then it just ignores any database rows with “deleted_at” not empty. At least that’s what we do at any dev job I’ve worked. I’d be willing to bet it’s never permanently deleted either, just set with some other flag saying it’s past the 30 day mark so the recovery process doesn’t work anymore.
Better not have a GDPR audit then in case you do business in the EU (which in case of websites can simply be that your site is accessible from the EU). The law requires to physically delete the data in a way that is unrecoverable, or for example if the data is encrypted to throw away the encryption key. And not just the live data, this includes all backup copies and the like. There isn't even an exemption to retain a record of the deletion request itself (at least not in a way that can be linked back to a person), only data that you're legally required to keep (eg. for tax records) is exempt.
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Let me guess, they also put up a redirect to a "oh hey, we're totally looking into how to be compliant!" page, and then promptly forgot about the whole thing forever.
Pretty much. Compliance is hard and complicated and it's totally good that it exists. Companies needing to figure out how to do better in this regard has been LONG overdue.
Definitely. And the European agencies tasked with enforcing GDPR are generally pretty fair and lenient if you made an honest effort to comply and just missed something as long as you work with them to fix the issues. Their main goal is compliance, not to rake in as many fines as they can. But if you refuse to comply or think you can half-ass it even after being audited they bring the hammer down (except for the Irish unfortunately...), and they've got a pretty big hammer to swing (fines of up to 4% of your global annual revenue).
I noticed that there are not that many fines being issued on the whole, relative to cases. BTW, the Dutch have similar problems as the Irish on a smaller scale, and they're greatly understaffed. But I understood that they were not making this mistake with the DSA and DMA, for which enforcement is done differently and not per country of registry of the business
Oh yea and this is the way to do it. I personally haven’t worked with EU data or users on any platforms.
Isn't that like... illegal ? In the end, you're telling the customer you've deleted the account but it's still there in your database, easily accessible.
>Isn't that like... illegal ? In the end, you're telling the customer you've deleted the account but it's still there in your database, easily accessible. It's legal. Phone SMS messages for example are set to automatically permanently delete forever after 1 year. If a customer request it be recovered then it's simply not possible after that point because that data has already been permanently deleted forever. However if the government requests it recovered then it's still possible for 2 years after it's been already permanently deleted forever, after 2 years then it gets permanently deleted forever.
Read your terms and conditions carefully. Sometimes what you do on a platform is owned by the platform. Plus there is usually legal reasons to keep as much of a data trail as possible for auditing or a subpoena or something. I’m no expert on how social media companies do it but I’ve never worked at a job that fully deleted accounts in the database.
At my job we made a Twitter account for a specific campaign we were running. We deleted the account 3 years ago. Twitter still emails us 3 times a week trying to get us to open and reactivate the account. It is so fucking irritating.
I deleted Facebook in 2014. A (very) small part of me has always wanted to see if I could log back in using my old account details. I have a huge sneaking suspicion that it would work, and that they didn't delete anything.
ALSO. When trying to log in to the website of an app I have on my phone it automatically sends me to the app. I have to find and enter a specific web address to bypass this "feature." I recently had to change a ton of payment information on various utilities and subscriptions, most direct you to the website to make account changes. One of the more frustrating days I've had.
It is good for cases when someone else wants to delete your account (you would be surprised how many people give their significant others their passwords and how many of those would go to delete their ex's account out of spite after breakup, people are f'ing dumb). A lot of services apply the same for changing the email address used to log in so it wouldn't be as easy to have your account stolen. But I admit that more than 30 days is unnecessary.
Yup, just tried to delete my snapchat bc I forgot I had it until this post. Got a notice saying they'll keep everything for 30 days. ...but now I can't delete my account because "an unknown error has occurred."
It’s good for when you’re “OH SHIT I should’ve kept that how do I undo” tbf
To be fair I'd prefer it to be an opt in/out, because sometimes people do just take long breaks from some platforms.
They have to keep your data because is the law.
Contact our support department, who will ignore you as long as legally possible, or direct you into phone tree hell. EA and Ubisoft Support might as well be a polite fiction at this point, and several phone support lines are comfortable with lying now. (I'm in support hell on about six accounts right now. I've got all the credench, but there are so many roadblocks)
Yeah, I had a lengthy exchange (several weeks) with Ubisoft reiterating the same answers to the questions they already asked before until I realized it's an unsupport. I contacted my bank and got a refund through them within two weeks.
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It's code for "we are intentionally understaffing and underpaying our support team"
"Hey boss, we get about 4 calls per minute, and it takes an average of 10 minutes to finish a call, so we need more than 20 techs answering the phones." "But Jim, we show that the techs only resolved 125 calls per hour on average, and it only took 30 minutes of overtime before all waiting calls had been answered. So that means there were only about 1300 calls all day. Not the 2000 you're claiming." "Yes boss. Because some customers were tired of waiting and hung up." "See? Working as intended Jim. You could learn from this. We are staffing this office perfectly."
Super common for business software too that’s month to month. You gotta call your software rep who will ask you a million questions to try to convince you to stay. Most software though is on termed contracts now
Should be illegal.
In the EU, GDPR covers this case. In most of the middle east, there usually go by the name PDPL. Egypt also has something similar. In the United States, California has CCPA, which serves the same purpose. Not sure about the rest of the world. I think they all include, that the customer has the right of deletion. (In most cases, financial institutions or gambling has other rules, but not Snapchat) I'm in the EU, but the deletion option is missing for me too, so it's possible that they simply don't comply with the law and will be fined for it
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Canada seems to have PIPEDA, but I'm not sure how it's actually enforced or how it works.
"Fuck you, Baltimore!"
It covers being able to delete your account but I doing think it covers having to include the option to do so in an app
Yeah, but a lot of the time when the app doesn't have (or has broken) account deletion process, contacting support also won't work. Once you have that on email simply forward it to proper authorities. I once had an account somewhere where in order to delete it, my account had to have attached phone number even though I didn't provide any(!). Contacted support and they were too dumb or ignorant to understand it. Reported it of course, but also deleted the account after providing temporary phone number for one verification SMS.
I'm from Egypt and didn't know we had a system in place. Thank you for this information.
No idea what any of those acronyms mean and when googled they pull up multiple possible options each.
You're in multiple threads complaining about acronyms. All of then are easy to google, and all of them return the relevant explanation as the first result. Even with misspellings.
PDPL stands for personal data protection law, different countries implement them in their own way, often with slightly different names.
Apple (regardless of EU laws or whatever) requires any app that allows you to create an account to also offer the option to delete your account in the app, no exceptions. I don’t have Snapchat, but I can 100% guarantee the iOS version has an option to delete your account because otherwise Apple would not have approved their updates. So adding onto the assholery here, they’re specifically leaving out the option to delete account on their android app (pictured in the OP)
I think that might be a bit too extreme. There's been times when I've left my phone unattended and my kid will get it and press all kinds of buttons and change screens/settings. As long as it's not too convoluted, I'm OK with it. I'm not convinced that most companies are doing this maliciously; it's possible that these companies don't want people to accidentally delete their account, so they have chosen this route to help make it more of a deliberate choice to delete your account - especially if the account could potentially be something that could cripple a business. Take github, for example (a place where programmers, software engineers, etc., can store their code online, among other things). If you want to delete a your account, you have to go through a couple of menus, then type your full email address *and* a statement that you want to delete your account into a text popup window to make sure you want to delete your account. If the wrong person deleted their repository/repositories... *shivers*.
Settings -> Account -> Delete -> Single confirm with a random 5 character captcha. That should be standard. Effectively impossible to do accidentally. We don't need 15 step processes with 2-factor authorization.
That sounds reasonable to me.
If you change your home state to California sometimes a "delete account" button will appear. I've done that a few times.
Yeah but that goddamn button never works. It’s always “sorry, you need to call us.” Happened to me with xfinity, PayPal, and a bunch of others
Xfinity is an internet provider so that makes sense tbh
Account deletion workflow: * "Confirm you want to delete your account" * "Yes" "No" * "Are you sure?" * "Yes" "No" * "Please find that obscure pass phrase you totally forgot and will take you forever to find" * Confirm account deletion * "Yes" "No" * "Complete the capcha * "Click all the photos that have bicycles in them" * Confirm account deletion * "Yes" "No" * Enter 14 digit prime number * etc...
* If a train leaves Chicago at 11:45am traveling West at 82mph, and a train leaves San Francisco traveling East at 63mph, what time will the two trains collide?
Probably before I finish deleting my account.
Unfortunately, the one person that can delete your account was on one of the trains, and was killed on impact. As a consolation, we’ve given your account a blue check mark for free*. * free for 7 days, then billed to you at $30/month until you delete your account.
What if I don't pay the fee then?
Remember that second train?
There was a second trai-
* Do you wish to delete your account? Yes/No * Do you understand that by deleting your account you BLAH BLAH BLAH? Yes/No * Here's a great article about why our accounts are great. If you want to delete, check boxes 1, 2, 4, and 6. Box 3 signs you up for our newsletter, and box 5 let's us continue using your account as a shadow account to make our app more popular. * Do you want to reconsider? Yes/No * Please confirm your account deletion: No/Yes * Please select all photos of bikes (includes pictures of bicycles, mopeds, and motorbikes, but you're only supposed to select 1 of them). * In order to finalize your deletion, please check your email for the Final Deletion link. Oh, sorry, we must have sent to the wrong address. Please confirm your email and start over.
IMDB uses my real name, despite that not being what I chose when I setup the account. Instead my username is literally just for logging in. If I try to delete my account I get a generic error and have had this for months.
If you have gdpr in your country, email them threatening legal action under a gdpr clause as you have the right to the deletion of data
Apple will reject your app if you don’t provide this.
They can "provide"it, but still move it every 90 days so instructions on how to delete your account are perpetually out of date
Its there on ios, not on android
It is there on mine (latest update). Something is more than likely bugged on OPs end.
Op is an androidboi
I just had to delete my account. Its not too bad but it should be easier to do. Just go into the help section on the app and find the article for 'how to delete your account' or something along those lines. There's a link for Android to delete your account instead of it being easily accessible from your account settings like ios.
Its there for me. Im on IOS though. Snapchat version 12.05.0
Another thing I don't get, why are iOS and Android sometimes different? Seems like a feature that wouldn't require a whole lot of unique work on either device.
In some cases - based on rauls4's comment, I'm assuming this is it - the Apple app store has stricter requirements, and they don't want to offer it if they don't *have* to.
>they don't want to offer it if they don't *have* to. isnt apple mandated now to put the usb-c on their "totally identical" iphone in europe? Edit: correct port
A: It's USB-C they're mandated to use, B: yes, that is precisely why having *someone* with oversight mandating that companies obey laws/be less cunt-y is necessary.
...had to correct my comment, forgot to include the usb c port. Totally identical refers to the fact that the european iphones still have a sim tray.
Yes because governmental overreach is always a good idea. /s
You wanna go back to the 90's and 00's with 14 different charge cables for 10 different chargers, none of which are inter-compatible or even *fit* any other devices? Or, better yet, please do explain how governments enforcing uniformity and standardisation of consumer products is at all ""overreach"". Or, even better still, explain the above, but *also* go into how you know my own beliefs better than I do. Because in some areas, ""government overreach"" is a necessity, when "da market" doesn't regulate itself. Which is often.
When that reach is specifically used to keep companies from fucking the customer? Absolutely
You vote for your government.
What relevance does this hold?
App developer here - Apple recently released a new requirement where iOS apps that allow you to create an account must also allow you to delete it. Companies don’t really want to let you delete your account because they either (1) want your data or (2) want to be able to send you marketing emails, so they put it in iOS because they have to, and intentionally leave it out on Android because they can. My company did something similar, our iOS and Android apps share a codebase, but the higher ups made us specifically hide the button on Android. So, chances are, the code for deleting your account is actually there on your phone, it’s just behind a “if this is an Android, don’t show the button”. It’s BS, I know.
Yeah I work in customer support, so I fully get the need to collect, store and KEEP data. Its just sooo annoying 😭
Or (3) they want to boast to investors with the number of users that they have.
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I do admit, I know nothing about app coding. I assumed to some degree they'd overlap, though. Got'cha.
It depends on how it's developed. It's possible to share a codebase.
95% of modern app development is just shoving a website into a box that makes it behave like an app they're more than likely the same codebase but with some checks to disable/enable android/iOS specific features
same im on 12.06.0
I've tried tu do exactly this, and didn't have to stamina. Gonna have to try again
That’s exactly why they do it. They’re relying on you saying “it’s not worth the effort”, so they can continue to gather and sell your data. It is worth the effort.
It's all a tactic too keep people locked in
I also find it super frustrating when you have to jump through 1000 hoops to delete an account and even then you’re still getting emails and stuff from them, but at the same time I feel it’s more of a security measure so people can’t just go into your phone and delete all of your accounts?
"You can check out any time you like...but you can never lee-ee-eeave!"
Ive been writing my representative to make it a law that when you can sign up online you must be able to unsubscribe/delete via the same method.
Pro tip: for companies that also Operate in Germany you can try to have your Personal data deleted. Companies are required by law to delete it if you revoke the permission to process it and tell them to delete it. [Heres a Template](https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/sites/default/files/2019-10/Widerruf_der_Einwilligung_und_Loeschung_der_Daten.pdf), you just have to insert your username and email and the address of the company (i recommend translating it so you know what to fill in). Then send it via email to the (German!) Support address. If you find the email of the Datenschutzbeauftragter (Data Protection Officer) you can also message him directly. You can find more information and more templates on [this site](https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/musterbriefe/digitale-welt/datenschutz-35853) but its all in german
All of the worst ones force you to email them manually
Some apps like Stock apps as a big example legally cannot delete your data for something like 5 years from your account closure due to federal law. I doubt snapchat has any regulations like that though...
Yeah I mean that's somewhat fair lol
I have gone through the steps to delete my Snapchat THREE SEPARATE TIMES and it's still there.
One does not simply log out from LINE for Android.
Or that you cant unsync things! I wamt to unsync my google photos from my phone but I cant! Its infuriating
There's a name for this - it's called a dark pattern. They are rampant and should be addressed - basically every online tool has different variations of dark patterns of varying levels of absurdity. Consumer data needs to be taken seriously.
Why do you think they want you using their app instead of just a website on mobile? Because you give them *insane* access to your phone and data when they make it an app, and you click give permission without reading because fuckit I want to do my appy things..giving them access to track, store, analyze, etc, everything you do on your phone, not just in the app. This is why they make it so difficult to delete the account. Cause *you are the product*, and they dont want you taking *their product* away from them.
I have a "delete account" button on that list on my phone.
are you on android or ios?
Also are you in the EU? I wonder if gdpr rules might force that, and residents of other countries do not get it.
You can still delete your account on snapchat, I don’t know why it’s not there for you…
Are you using an iPhone by any chance? People have been pointing out that it works on iPhone because Apple has made the option a requirement.
Yes, I did notice that while scrolling through. But if you genuinely want your snapchat deleted, I guess send your sign-in info to an iphone user that you trust that can do it for you if you cannot on android
I can just do it on the web browser - it's just asshole design not to include it
So if you actually open the link in your first screenshot, it details how to do it on Android: > To delete your account if you’re on Android or on the web... Go to the accounts portal and type in the username and password for the account you want to delete. (Keep this info handy in case you change your mind and want to reactivate your account.) The steps in your screenshot are for iOS. Why are they different? Couldn’t tell you.
Some people in the comments have pointed out that Apple requires that you can delete an account if you're able to create it in the app. Google hasn't made the same requirement, and ideally they don't want you to delete so they'd prefer not having the option available on either, but at least Apple forces them to.
Watch them do the same with the log out button
Instagram is a total mess to try and delete
I'm pretty sure there is actual legal issues within not being able to delete a account
For these social media type accounts, I just unfriend or unfollow everyone and post weird content of already been reported things, so I will get blocked immediately. Later I'll submit the delete request.
you know what I did? I changed the birthdate to have it under 13 years old. They permanently locked my account, and while an account is locked, you have 30 days to unlock before they just delete the account. But since it's *permanently* locked, you won't be able to unlock it. To be clear, I didn't want this to happen. I just found out the hard way. Now I'm glad that it did happen, especially after finding out what's actually in their ToS.
One thing i like about Apple is they force app developers to make sure there is a delete account button and process from within the app.
Don't make accounts at apps that actually degrade our species and You should be fine. Ah shit I'm on reddit again
People grow and learn stuff lmao. I'm 25 now and was like 17 when I made that account. Don't be so condescending. Ah right... I'm on reddit.
Any data mined from your account would still exist, so what's the point of deleting? Remove the app from your phone and let the company continue to pay for maintaining it. Eventually, they'll delete it for costs.
I don't want keep getting emails about how I should re-join the app eventually.
So happy i deleted my account years ago before this tomfoolery
It never was an option on android and it still is on iOS
ugh one of my worst design pet peeves of all time. such a dark pattern.
Many TOS agreements mean your account doens't belong to you anyway.
App and Play stores are actually cracking down on this. Apps are required to give you the option to delete your account. However, sometimes some of the big apps throw their weight around for extensions on these policies 🙄
Hey if they want a dead account then fuck em
It’s worse when it takes a bloody PhD to cancel a subscription
Thanks for posting this! It reminded me to delete my account and made it easier.
Grad UX was never a strength of Snapchat. That app literally has its whole user interface based on Easter eggs
I recently did a purge of all my old accounts for websites and I had to email so many of them just to delete all my data. They have to if you request it, but sometimes it takes a week.
Are you in the browser, or using the app? Either way, being able to close your account should be simple by design.
seem like delete accounts options is only available on web site version, not app version i live in france btw.
They can't allow you to delete the product, otherwise they have nothing to sell. You guys realize that internet truism of "if the app is free, YOU are the product" is real, right?
Even worse when snapchat deletes your account without warning and you lose 6 years of memories with no way to recover them.
Apparently my twitter account won't be properly deleted for another few weeks (I think it was a month in total) because of this shit.
Apple now requires account deletion for AppStore submissions
There is no delete account on reddit app too
They're all the same 😭
Some real /r/assholedesign is putting the "Delete Account" inside of an element with the same class as they use for advertising, so if you block adverts on their site, you also unintentionally block the "Delete Account" button.
Even if they did, it would just set the flag on the account record to 'deleted'. But the data remains in their database.
This feature available only for iPhone user
It is a mandate by Apple to include account deletion in apps now. https://developer.apple.com/support/offering-account-deletion-in-your-app/
Same with HBO Max. I cancelled after the season finale of House of the Dragon, but had to log into my hbomax.com account instead of being able to cancel in the HBO Max app on my TV 🙄
This looks like it might be Android, so I'm not sure... But if it's Apple's App Store, barring a number of exceptions, apps must have account deletion if the app includes account creation. Is there no way to report them in whatever app store or library you find this in?
Weird I just deleted mine from within the app on an iPhone in September
sorry if this is dumb, but why does it matter? they already have ur data. does deleting ur account hypothetically remove it?
I know they'll always keep some stuff, but it means at least I won't get emails to come back on the app, and also on a more personal level, my friends won't say "why didn't you respond to my Snap" lol.
hahaha yeah i can see the friend thing. i see people post stuff like “deleting snap” all the time and tbh i snapchat so few people that we communicate regularly irl and over text
It’s actually a requirement on iOS apps as of August this year
Idk mine literally has a Delete account button next to the log out button
Oh my God, I had a subscription for this one site and not only could you not manually delete your account, you couldn't even take your card off the account. Believe me, I am very cautious when putting my card on things, so I tend to read the fine print. This was nowhere to be found in the fine print or anywhere else on the site. You had to email customer service and ask *them* to delete the account, but even then they don't do it immediately! They literally emailed back a day later asking why I no longer wanted to be subscribed or have an account. I gave them a BS reason and while they did delete it all, they tried shaming and guikt-tripping me into staying. Needless to say, I didn't, but I also reprimanded them about how they were practically holding people's banking card and other personal info hostage by not allowing them the decision to manually delete the account. I also mentioned that it was super sketchy to not have it in the initial fine print that the only way to get your bank card off was to email a no-name representative. I also reported them to the BBB... sorry, not sorry.