dana boyd describes an awful experience which befell a friend. Google wiped his accounts - Gmail, Google Docs, the works. Which took a serious bite out of his life. Google eventually restored what was lost, but boyd wonders:
When companies host all of your data and have the ability to delete you and it at-will, all sorts of nightmarish science fiction futures are possible. This is the other side of the "identity theft" nightmare where the companies thieve and destroy individuals' identities.
Moreover,
There's also a flip-side to this story. Google was able to restore his account because they kept everything on backup servers. In this case, Bob didn't want to have all of his content deleted. But what if he had deleted it himself and expected it to be deleted permanently? Who should have the right to recall his data and under what circumstances? I find it particularly haunting that there is no way to delete your Facebook account.
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