Imagine you could delete all your personal data from social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. A new software, developed by a team of young Dutch artists, now helps you take the principle of “unfriending” to a different level.
Initially, the three graduates from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam developed their tool Suicide Machine Web 2.0 to make a statement about how social networks compromise personal privacy.
But what initially began as a practical joke for Danja Vasiliev, Gordan Savivic and Walter Langelaar, has become an unexpected success since the software was first launched on December 19.
By late January, their website had received more than one million hits. Thousands of people have downloaded the software, while 1,500 people have effectively used it.
“We have already removed more than 90,000 friends and 300,000 tweets,” Langelaar told the German Press Agency dpa .
“We started this project because each of us felt uncomfortable with social network sites,” he said.
“Several years ago, when LinkedIn was just launched, a friend told me he made a profile for me on that website. That was an awkward experience for me. I trusted this man, yet suddenly all my personal data were online.
“Back then it was not yet possible for LinkedIn users to delete their account. It subsequently took me more than two weeks of intensive e-mail correspondence with the LinkedIn staff before they agreed to delete my data,” Langelaar added.
Most social network sites have since developed their own privacy policies and also enable their users to delete their accounts.
“But all your data remains in cache, sometimes for many years,” Langelaar says, adding that computer-savvy people could retrieve such information easily.
“Also, whatever you have written from your social network account on other pages, remains visible.” And more dangers are looming, says Langelaar.
“Facebook plans to introduce a paid service, perhaps by making a partnership with one or more major internet providers.
“If this happens, people who are not paid users will probably lose access to their own private data. How do you even know what a major company wants to do with your personal data and with whom it wants to share those data?” Langelaar asks.
This is where Suicide Machine Web 2.0 comes in. So, how does it work? You download the software, which is based on the so-called Selenium software mostly used to test web applications, to your own computer.
Then you run the program. Interestingly, it does not delete your account on the particular social network you want removed.
“Suicide Machine merely empties the entire contents of your social network account,” Langelaar explains.
“In other words: all your tweets disappear, including those that have since appeared on other websites.” By focusing on deleting all content, the tool ensures all personal data in cache also disappears, although, Langelaar admits, it cannot be predicted how long that takes.
“By contrast,” Langelaar notes, “if you delete your Facebook account today, the company merely ‘unpublishes’ your account, but all information remains in cache.” For more information, log on to http://suicidemachine.org/
