Opinion: deleting online accounts should not be hard

The number of online accounts is growing for the majority of Internet users over time. Users sign-up for new services and may abandon others. Some services get sign-ups just for testing, others may be used for longer periods of time.
It is inevitable that some accounts won't be used anymore. Most users don't delete online accounts of services that they abandon, but let them sit idly instead.
There are several reasons for that, and one of the primary ones is that deleting online accounts can be painfully difficult. There is no standard procedure that users may follow; some sites may not even offer a quick delete option for user accounts. It may be necessary to contact support or even send them a Fax to get an account deleted. Even sites that make it less difficult may require some digging in the account settings or support pages to find out how the account can be deleted.
Some sites make it difficult on purpose, to retain user accounts. While investors do focus on metrics such as monthly active users or daily active users, having a large user base may still attract investors or advertisers.
Time may also play a part in the decision. The prospect of having to dig deep into a site just to find an option to delete an account, which may not exist, is often enough to deter users from even trying.
Reduce your digital footprint
Accounts leave a digital footprint, as most of them may be linked to an email address, phone number or other information that can be linked directly to a user.
While some Internet users may not care about the ever growing footprint of theirs, others do. Keeping old accounts around may also be problematic from a privacy and security point of view. Sites and services may get hacked, and data may fall into the hands of criminals who may be able to exploit it. Other parties may be interested in the data, and some of it may be outright embarrassing if it should leak.
Many Internet users use the same email address and password for their online accounts; a breach of one may result in a domino-like falling of other online accounts at the hand of the attacker.
There are also services that may be used to sign-in to others. Google, Facebook or Microsoft accounts may be used to sign-up for other services. The links need to be severed then not at the site a user signed-up for, but at the site that was used to complete the sign-up.
Closing Words
Online services and sites need to make it easier to close accounts. While some offer links to delete an account on their homepage, others make it harder as it should be. Right now, it may take days to delete a good number of old accounts on the Internet.
Now You: how do you handle old accounts? Keep or delete?


Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.