Facebook is having to face the UK Information Commissioner's Office over concerns that the company is unnecessarily hanging on to user data after accounts appear to have been deleted.
If you decide to leave the site (oh brave ones!), your account is deactivated but the private data kept, presumably in case you decide to sign up again in the future. You can circumnavigate the problem by simply logging in, deleting personal details and then deactivating the account, but according to the ICO, that might not be good enough.
Dave Evans of the ICO told the BBC that "an individual who has deactivated their account might not find themselves motivated enough to delete information that's about them maybe on their wall or other people's sites." Now, I'm all for privacy protection being the default modus operandi on the Internet, but when the possibility of protecting your data is clearly there before you and you still don't take it, just how responsible is the company in question?
Surely if I decide to delete my profile I should be able to assume that my profile has been *deleted* and not just tucked away somewhere just in case I change my mind?