Even then, you're not out of the woods. As we mentioned, you have to wait two weeks for your profile to be erased permanently, but if you interact with Facebook in any way during those 14 days (including "Like" boxes and Facebook Connect), the account cancellation will be aborted. Let's say you use Facebook Connect on a website and you set it up to log you in automatically. As soon as you navigate into that website, Facebook will assume you regretted your decision and will reactivate your account.



"It's OK. We forgive you."

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Plus, Facebook pictures are also notoriously hard to delete. Try this: Upload a picture to Facebook and then copy the image's URL (that's the long address ending in .jpg). Now delete the image from your profile and paste the URL to your browser's address bar. The picture will still be there. If you check back in a month, chances are it still won't be gone.

A study by Cambridge University found out that out of 16 social networks, seven take longer than a month to delete your images. Think of the implications: Let's say an embarrassing picture somehow finds its way into your profile, possibly due to circumstances involving alcohol consumption. The next morning you rush to delete the picture, but if even one of your friends saw it and copied the URL, he'd be able to access, download and propagate the image for the next month.

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Facebook admits that deleted content "may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time" adding that it "will not be available to others," but that's bullshit -- try that URL from before in a different computer, and it will still work. By contrast, sites such as Flickr and Twitter delete images instantly. And speaking of Twitter, it doesn't store your deleted tweets for any amount of time -- but the Library of Congress does. For, you know, posterity. It keeps a record of "ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006," in case future generations wonder what Snooki was having for lunch on Dec. 23, 2010.



Tequila. She had tequila.

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Maxwell Yezpitelok lives in Chile, and when he isn't waiting for the next catastrophe, he likes to waste his time writing back to scammers or making stupid comics.

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