Facebook TOS and Data Protection

In one of my tweets this morning, I saw a link to this blog entry: http://is.gd/gVmq where it complains about the TOS. I recently created a FB account, mostly to use it as a means by which others could share pictures with me. I never intended to actually post information or pictures myself, but every time I would ask for some common pictures from an event et al, I would immediately be asked for my FB account. I thought what the hell, just sign up. My bad.

My bad also was to not read the TOS properly.

The previous blog post pretty much points to a section on the TOS that indicates that FB can use your data for anything it wants. For example, they can take a picture of my kids, publish it on the front page of a magazine, and make money off of it.  Even though I haven't posted anything, I decided to cancel my account. To my surprise. You can't. The account will still remain there and as soon as you try and login, they will send you a re-activation email. Now in Spain, and as Casey confirmed, in the UK too, that goes against that Data Protection act.

What I'm wondering is having signed up in Spain, but the service being provided in the US, what legal foot I have to stand on to get my data completely removed.

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# re: Facebook TOS and Data Protection
Gravatar A couple of years ago I signed up for a Facebook account and was rather annoyed that it wouldn't let me delete my account, but merely "deactivate" it like you described.

I emailed the admins asking them to delete my account, which they apparently did upon my request. Whether or not they retained any of the data though, I can't attest to, but they did claim to have "completely wiped [the information] from our servers".
Left by Alex Washtell on 1/23/2009 10:59 AM
# re: Facebook TOS and Data Protection
Gravatar Facebook were investigated by the data commission in the UK and 'Forced' to provide a way of leaving.

This link should help you as it summarises the whole process.

www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/19/fb_easy_to_leave/
Left by Simon Wildgoose on 1/26/2009 11:45 AM
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