Saturday, May 15, 2010

Your personal information is never private... and it is never deleted

A few months back I deleted my profile on Zoosk after extensively testing their system. Today, I decided to re-connect by using the 'Facebook Connect' button on their home page and this is what I got:

Your account is currently inactive.

You don't have an active Zoosk account, but you look familiar. Our records indicate that you had a Zoosk account in the past, but at some point you deactivated it :( If you would like to start using Zoosk again, we can try to recover your old account.

Now, why would I look familiar if I removed and deleted my account? Why do they retain personal information when I had requested to be removed? All this raises a question, which is partially related to the Facebook privacy issues currently brought to our attention: why do these site retain your info, even after you have requested it deleted and what do they do with it?