Facebook does not erase user-deleted content

Nearly a year on since Cambridge University researchers discovered that Facebook, along with other major social networks, doesn’t erase server-side copies of your uploaded data, the world’s biggest social network is still guilty of such a sin.

Since then, the site has nearly doubled in size. It’s now has the population of the third biggest country in the world, with tens of thousands of servers holding your data, which as soon as it is uploaded, belongs to them to do as and what they wish with it.

Continued: http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=4808&tag=nl.e589

I found this out personally when I received an "update" from Facebook a few weeks ago indicating that someone I'd never heard of wanted to be "friends" (or whatever they call it). The request was dated back to Sept '09, yet I had canceled that account 7 or 8 months before then. Must've been some sort of error on their servers that allowed the request to go through after more than a year since I "closed" that account.

Never liked Facebook, don't trust them as far as I could throw my hard drive and only signed up under a false name to participate in a book club for a few weeks, then "deleted". The email I used was not one I use for any other purpose but if I google it I can find it listed on those spam sites (where they sell lists of emails to other scammers).

I figure the government has enough info about me based on the few sites I do post

Lady C.