Why don't message boards let you delete your account?

[Free4Life11]

This is something I've never understood. I've joined many message boards over the years but never once have I found a way to delete your account.

I just don't like the idea of having "tracks" all over the internet. Sometimes I join just to make a post or two and then can't cancel.

It seems like a lot of the boards use this software too -- VBulletin I think??

I'm not thinking about cancelling my account here, but this is the most active board I post on so I figure someone might know.

 

[WDWHound]

I have wondered this myself. I signed up for a cruise board to view some photos aof a ship (later found out I didn't need to siugn up), and the admins of that board keep emailing me with spam even though I selectect the option not to recieve email from the admins. I would love to cancel the account, but can find no way to do so.

 

[Free4Life11]

I think the V Bulletin software should allows to go to the User CP and just click "delete my account."

 

[Pagan Moon]

It's probably so people can't have a whole bunch of accounts at once or delete one to start another. I think it is security reasons. You may be a trouble maker, cancel the account, start a new, and start more trouble.

All you need to do is ask the webmaster to freeze or cancel your account and most of them do it right away. I had to have one cancled because I switch internet providers so didn't have the same email and I moved so I had a different address. Within 48 hours I was removed.

 

[grlpwrd]

It could also be used for the site's advertising and marketing purposes.

If a website claims to have 5,000 or so members then that could mean $$$ when it comes to selling ad space to potential advertisers.

Members = Money (or potential profit)

 

[momof3disneyholics]

It could also be used for the site's advertising and marketing purposes.

If a website claims to have 5,000 or so members then that could mean $$$ when it comes to selling ad space to potential advertisers.

Members = Money (or potential profit)

 

[safetymom]

If you have ever posted to a message board you may come up in Google. Do a search for your user name and you will be surprised what you find.

So you may cancel your user name but your posts may live on.

 

[Free4Life11]

I did and that's what I don't like! I want to NOT show up in Google.

 

[KathyTX]

Any post you make on a bulletin board exists on the Internet, and has the potential to be indexed by search engines like Google. That's just the nature of the beast. When you post on the Internet, you're making your words very public.

It's true that you cannot delete your account. A bulletin board is really a big database. You've got your user account information, and then you've got the posts made by each user.

If you were to delete a user's account, all the posts ever made by that user would now be orphaned records; you'd have posts that have no "owner" that can't be resolved back to a user account. From a database perspective, that's technically a big messy no-no.

Once the account exists, you can't turn back time and make it not exist. But you can change the rules that apply to it for making future posts. For instance, if a user is banned, his account still exists but the rules have changed and he's no longer able to log in or post. In this way, we can DISABLE accounts. We just can't "poof" them away and pretend they never existed.