Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe

Posted by hellofunk on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:50AM
from the ask-hn dept.

As an American, you are not protected under GDPR. Yet apparently, if you live in Europe, you are, regardless of nationality. What distinguishes how FB should behave if an American abroad deletes their FB account vs an American at home? And would waiting until a Europe trip to delete your account make any difference? (presumably because you'd be doing it from a European network, similar to an American abroad?)

( 10 comments | 7 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by jackgolding on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:11PM (#17197436)

Hypothetically, if you have EU citizenship by ancestry you would be protected under GDPR. If you have this but have never been to Europe, how is Facebook able to determine that from a US IP you aren't eligible to delete your account under GDPR? (i.e. a true delete rather than their fake delete)

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by hellofunk on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:24PM (#17197580)

I think you are talking about the reverse -- how can FB know you are just an American visiting Europe vs. one actually living there? Because in the latter case, you are covered under GDPR but I don't think you are under the first one.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by jackgolding on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:55PM (#17197907)

GDPR covers EU residents so you don't need to be a citizen (i.e. you could travel to EU and delete all your data) - see chapter 1 "your company is established outside the EU but offers goods or services to, or monitors the behaviour of, individuals within the EU."

EDIT: reading a bit more seems that some companies think that its only when a data subject has data processed within the EU (i.e. they data subject is in the EU) or the data processing is done in the EU.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by icedchai on Thursday May 31, 2018 @02:34PM (#17198840)

How do we know they do anything different for either way? We don't. Maybe they just "true delete" all accounts.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by hellofunk on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:07AM (#17204511)

> How do we know they do anything different for either way?

Because FB has said they will not roll out the data policies in Europe to the rest of the world.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by icedchai on Friday June 01, 2018 @08:56AM (#17204815)

They can "say" anything.

There's no way to tell whether they "true delete" or "soft delete" accounts.

From an engineering perspective, it would make little sense to differentiate EU from elsewhere.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by hellofunk on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:00AM (#17204837)

> From an engineering perspective, it would make little sense to differentiate EU from elsewhere.

But from a business perspective, it would make a tremendous amount of sense.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by giardini on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:04PM (#17197363)

Nice try, NSA!

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by krrw on Friday June 01, 2018 @01:35AM (#17202833)

You don't need GDPR to delete an FB account. You can always head on to https://facebook.com/help/delete_account to initiate the process right away.

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Re:Ask HN: Delete a U.S. FB Account While in Europe by romanovcode on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:40AM (#17205172)

This will not delete your account. It will mark it as "deleted" in database after 14 days of inactivity.

You need GDPR to actually delete your info from databases.

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