Facebook is changing their tune to avoid another “Beacon” fiasco:

On Monday, Facebook modified its help pages to tell people that if they wanted to remove their accounts entirely, they could e-mail the company to have it done. But on Tuesday, representatives of Facebook stopped short of saying the company would introduce a one-step delete account option.

“We’re always working to improve the user experience,” Katie Geminder, director of user experience and design at Facebook, said in an e-mail.

“We are measuring the effects of the change we made yesterday, and if we think more needs to be done to improve the user experience for deleting an account, we’ll test different implementations and measure them accordingly,” she added.

The updated Facebook help page now includes the question, “How do I delete my account?” The answer reads, “If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, we can take care of this for you. Keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added.”

The entry then says, “If you would like your account deleted, please contact us using the form at the bottom of the page and confirm your request in the text box.”

Geminder said Facebook’s policies reflected the fact that many people came back to Facebook after they had stopped using the site for a period of time. “On any given day, the number of users reactivating their accounts is roughly half of the number of users deactivating their accounts,” she said.

Feel free to let us know how it goes: tips@consumerist.com.

Facebook tries to help users delete accounts [Seatlle P-I]

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