Discussion

Ask HN: How to leave Facebook as a non-user?

I have a Facebook account that I setup in 2011 and never used. I made one friend, which was my wife and then disabled the account. No posts, no photos, no likes, nothing.

A few months ago I started receiving update notifications to the email account it was setup with that I've been ignoring. That was until I noticed I had received a suggestion to join a colon cancer support group a few weeks ago.

To send me that came across as highly invasive and instantly had me wondering what Facebook was silently compiling and inferring about me and my family.

I recovered my password and logged into my account, had a look at what details I had in there, changed my DOB wondering why I had added it (I normally enter a fake (correct year but Jan 1), who was being suggested as a friend, where it was suggesting I live, and then attempted to download the data dump that Facebook had on me before I delete the account permanently.

I'm now locked out unless I upload a driver's license or passport id to prove my identity.

Given that Facebook shouldn't know anything about me: no photos, no address or phone number (unless they have that from my now deleted WhatsApp account); they shouldn't be able to confirm my identity, unless they are storing information I have not given them or by inferring information via my wife.

So I'm stuck. Any suggestions other than going back to ignoring Facebook?

47 points cantgetout 7 years ago 13 comments

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton