Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

… I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

–HAL9000 series, Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001, A Space Odyssey

From HAL to Skynet, what happens when “the system” won’t let you “unplug?”

Facebook, friend of social networkers and most probably governments alike, recently shut down access to it from a new service that began at the end of December, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Suicide Machine lets you “sign out forever,” now only from Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace, but it used to include Facebook, too. Facebook has now shut down access to its site from the Suicide Machine server, according to a CNET article and the Suicide Machine site as well.

CNET quotes a Facebook representative:

“Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine collects log-in credentials and scrapes Facebook pages, which are violations of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. We’ve blocked the site’s access to Facebook, as is our policy for sites that violate our SRR. We’re currently investigating and considering whether to take further action.”

What if you don’t trust Facebook to delete your account? Instead of just deleting your account, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine systematically (with a script) “walks” through your account, friend by friend, and deletes your connections one at a ime. You might understand why Facebook, or some of its friends, might not like that! Unfortunately, before deleting your friends, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine changes your profile photo to a pink noose, and changes your password so that you cannot “resurrect” yourself, remove the final “marker,” or check to see that all of your friends were deleted completely (no script errors).

What if you don’t trust Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to delete all of your friends completely? According to CNET, some “dead” Facebook accounts still had friends in them!

My experience with a few high tech companies and with many more of the corporate customers that they serve/served makes me believe that any data that ever makes it to a data base will be there FOREVER, regardless of what someone tells you about “data-aging policies” and destroying data after a length of time (usually so that data cannot be subpoenaed).

As it says in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

“The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

So, if you want some aspects of your life to remain “private,” first off, “Good Luck!” and second off, make sure that you and all of your many, many “friends” do not splash them across the Net. You will want to cancel your cell phone service “fer shure” and may want to live in a small cabin in Montana as well, one with enough tree cover to partially screen you from satellites and drones.

(Note added January 19, 2010: Apparently, after initial blockage by Facebook, the “suicides” on all of the services that I mentioned, including Facebook, are continuing.)

-Bill at

Cheshire Cat Photo™ – “Your Guide to California’s Wonderland™”

You can view higher-resolution photos (*generally* 7-30 megabytes, compressed) at the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Pro Gallery on Shutterfly™, where you can also order prints and gifts decorated with the photos of your choice from the gallery. Apparel and other gifts decorated with some of our most popular photos can be ordered from the Cheshire Cat Photo™ Store on CafePress®. Both Shutterfly™ and CafePress® ship to most international locations worldwide! Framed prints and prints on canvas can be ordered from our galleries on imagekind® and redbubble®. All four locations are accessible from here. If you don’t see what you want or would like to receive an email when new photos are up on the site, send us an email at info@cheshirecatphoto.com.

©2010 William F. Hackett. All Rights Reserved.