Facebook and other sites insist that you register using personally identifiable information (and that the same information is made public as part of your use of their services and is also often used by themselves or other parties for marketing [and is stored on their company systems and those of other parties too]). They are obliged to remove such stored personally identifiable information at the users request, in the case of Facebook around 90 days after deletion is requested. They'll delete your timeline, comments, photos, likes, etc. but due to the "self" nature of such an account it doesn't impact greatly on other people's profiles or timelines.
In the case of CycleChat your account is created using a chosen username (pseudonym) which is not covered by any regulations and is not personally identifiable information. Equally any posts you make or threads you start are directly linked with others on the site and removing them would break the conversations. Since you are not posting them as "you" it is reasonable to leave them in place if you later decide to leave because nobody will be able to identify that they were posted by you. Everyone who registers for an account agrees to this when they sign-up and I have no problem in deleting any personal information from anywhere on the site, such as address, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. (
people sometimes post this info on ride or classified threads and forget they've posted it).
It is also a practical consideration; when people leave (
for whatever reason) they usually intend it to be permanent, but in practice we've found that a good number later make a return (sometimes years later) and wish to re-open their original account.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Shaun
