Agreed. I’ve done this and I’d you have an existing fan base on those platforms, a final post that explains where you are and why you’re not active can help keep those folks engaged.

Plus I feel like I’m still costing the platform the fractions of fractions of a cent to keep my data stored, replicated and active somewhere

No worries, they more than paid for that storage with the data they sold off. At least before GDPR rulings shut that down.

There isn't anything unique about your account on most social media platforms. This isn't a "plant your flag" situation like when trying to prevent identity theft. You don't need to register your account before a bad actor does. Sure, I created an online account with the IRS, credit bureaus, etc. before somebody else could. That's important because they are tied to unique identifiers like your SSN, etc. But somebody could just create a social media account impersonating you even if you already have an account on that social network. There isn't anything enforcing the uniqueness.

My Twitter account has 140K+ followers and impersonators keep making copies that they use for cryptocurrency scams. So that's why I'm personally a little sensitive to deleting it, even if I've mostly committed to leaving that hellhole.

What does keeping the account actually do to prevent scamming? They’re going to scam regardless.

Counter point - why is it an issue to wipe the account of its content and update the bio to simply say the owner is no longer on social media and any other accounts you come across are not them.

Removing your account completely from Twitter makes it immediately available for anyone else to take, and for larger accounts you can bet theres a whole host of automated monitoring going on, ready to nab it and use it for easy profit.

Keeping the account doesn't have to mean you're 'giving away' any info. Hell delete it and instantly recrate it if thats the worry.

> Removing your account completely from Twitter makes it immediately available for anyone else to take,

Do you have a source for this? The only thing i can find is a random tweet from Elmo in 2023. I deleted my twitter account in the 2022-ish timeframe, and the handle I had (created in 2007) was my first initial + last name, which I would think would be claimed by now. It's not, so I'm thinking that deleted account handles can't be reused.

They can be taken immediately. Source me, former Twitter employee pre 2021

It must have changed between when you worked there and now, because I just checked and I can't sign up with my old handle (despite it returning a "this account doesn't exist" error when attempting to view it).

As of 2023 the model was to allow taking a handle even if it already exists but did not post for a while: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-inactive...

So it seems unlikely they would keep deleted handles forever. I bet they become part of this marketplace program a la "premium domains".

I can’t find any evidence that the plan outlined in that article was actually launched. The owner of Twitter says a lot of stuff, but most of it is made up.

That's pretty much the only upside to that blue checkmark these days. Making anyone able to buy one was a huge mistake, but they will at least do the minium check to see if someone else with that name already has a checkmark.

Will they? I'd actually be surprised if there are many people that, upon receiving a suspicious message from someone who claims to be Joe Schmoe, will actually go and check to see if a different account from Joe Schmoe with a blue check. I think it's much more likely that they're either going to recognize it as a scam right away, or they won't and they'll fall for it. In either of those cases, it doesn't help for the blue-checkmark-holder to keep their account.

There will always be someone falling for scams. No amount of safeguards will protect them if they do zero due diligence and the scammer is persistent enough. The checkmark isn't an end-all-be-all, but it's another small step someone can use to verify without too much hassle.

also, I just noticed "they" is ambiguous here. I meant "the twitter staff giving checkmarks". At least I hope they do some basic check before handing out a checkmark to an obvious impersonator.

I was given a blue checkmark by pre-Musk Twitter because of the cryptocurrency scams. It was taken away in the early days of Musk Twitter when verification meant “anyone with $8.” Ironically, it was forced back against my will and without my paying for it, because Musk was embarrassed that larger accounts didn’t have checks. Obviously it didn’t serve any useful anti-impersonation purposes at that point, but I got free “Grok” I guess?

Is this a thing? Why would it be? Look at my username - how many people with that name exist in the world?

Only one of us can have a blue check on Twitter? Which one?

I’m pretty sure GP is saying if you already had an account and you delete it, it’s trivially easy for someone to register with your old handle and impersonate you

Of course people can always impersonate you but the goal here is to prevent them from impersonating you with a social handle people knew you had.

If I recall correctly, the handle you deleted stays inactive and is unavailable to new registrants. This is present on Google at least, I assume it's the same elsewhere.

The concept of a handle goes beyond a username. If someone can construct a profile that looks like someone's profile on another site and contains approximately the words in the username, like _username or imusername instead of username, they might be able to impersonate it. In that case it would be good to have an active profile on that platform to counteract it.

Not the case on Twitter. It becomes instantly available to anyone who wants it.

Well that seems... dumb.

Yup, about par for the course with Twitter these days sadly.

Well, it's a Twitter product decision, so, yes, 'dumb' is about what one would expect.

That's an interesting point that I had not considered. In that case, your handle itself is the unique identifier. That said, if I recall correctly some sites do not recycle handles, but this is still an interesting point nonetheless.

I have a very common name, and monkey's paw wish managed to get the unnumbered version for my gmail address.

It has been a significant amount of work just dealing with all the derppelgängers out there who use an address they don't own for important things. Medical records. Divorce papers. Mortgages. The short of it is that it doesn't even require maliciousness on someone else's part to be affected by impersonation, accidental or otherwise. So yeah, keep what you've got, because there's no guarantee the next person to get it will not somehow affect you.

I registered a domain with my name, many moons ago.

Sometime later, a lawyer in Australia registered the .au version, but it was <MY NAME>.com.au, not <MY NAME>.au. <MY NAME>.com (no .au) was (and still is) my domain, and I get email, there.

I started getting really confidential stuff sent to my email, from the Australian courts. Stuff that could easily get people fired and sued.

I reported it for ages to both the courts and the lawyers. Eventually (after about 2 years), it stopped. I haven't gotten one of those for a long time.

Agree. Hold onto them, else someone can snatch them up and you may have to clean up the reputational mess later. See this happen to an acquaintance of mine.

Some, like LinkedIn, allow you to place the account in "hibernation." Which removes the ability to login without reactivating it, but doesn't completely remove it.

Not as reliable as doing a small amount of gardening of yours.

They will do this either way. Fake profiles are created all the time that are copied exactly from a real person's profile. If you have an account, and don't log in and check it every now and then, this will probably happen to you too.

That is poor advice. There are now roughly a dozen people who have social media accounts in my name, because it’s their name too. This isn’t impersonation. It’s also not a problem.

Someone recently created a "duplicate" account for the dad of one of my friends. Same profile picture, username very similar. But one of his friends who received a friend request from the new account was already friends with the old account and wrote a message asking what that was about, which is how my friend discovered it. So at least in that one instance, having the account was helpful.

Also:

TSA officer: "please log in to your social media account"

You: "I have no social media"

TSA officer: "step out of the line please"

surely annoying, probably illegal