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Facebook Communications Network Social Networks The Internet

Facebook Will Harass You Mercilessly If You Try To Break Up (slate.com) 236

Posted by BeauHD from the tough-loss dept.
schwit1 shares a summary from PJ Media: Breaking up with Facebook is apparently as difficult as breaking up with a bad boyfriend or girlfriend who won't accept your decision. That's the experience Henry Grabar of Slate had when he stopped signing on. He stopped logging in on June 6 and stayed off Facebook for ten days. He had been a member for over ten years and this was the longest period he had remained off the social network. But Facebook didn't leave him alone. He received 17 email messages in a span of nine days urging him to return.

Grabar is not alone in trying to wean himself off Facebook for various reasons. Some do it because they realize it can be a waste of time, while others do it because of the company's inability to protect (or lack of interest in protecting) its members' personal data. The company has mistakenly released data of millions of its members and friends of members to third parties, and many of them have used the data for illicit purposes. While Facebook says they are not losing members, some recent statistics paint a different story. According to a Pew study, only 51 percent of U.S. teenagers use the service now, down from 71 percent in 2015. This was the first time the numbers have fallen. The frequent messages reinforced Grabar's decision to stay off the platform. Some of the messages included photo updates from his friends; liked posts from groups he belonged to; and comments about a news article that was posted to a group he belonged to.
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Facebook Will Harass You Mercilessly If You Try To Break Up More

Facebook Will Harass You Mercilessly If You Try To Break Up

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  • Bamboozlement (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I left many years ago. I keep getting the occasional reset your password email, with a link to click if I didn't request the password reset. Guess what's the first thing they ask me when I click that link... Sigin in.

    • We should seize on this analogy. The problem isnt that facebook has your data, it is that you don't have anything that belongs to facebook to trade back for it. When you breakup IRL you also have to return each other's shit stored at your respective apartments. Meet in the ihop parking lot and move her hairbrush, potpouri, photos of her, and Duran Duran CDs to her trunk, and take back your shirts, varsity jacket, and your dog's extra bowl/mat/food. But she conveniently forgets to return your Starbucks

    • I haven't left Facebook, but I still get messages telling me to come back!
      Sometimes I get an email about what's happened while I was away (for a whole two days).
      If I type in the password wrong even once, I immediately get an email offering to help me logged back on. This shows up sometimes before I've even finished typing in a password a second time.

      Not only is leaving Facebook like breaking up with someone, staying with Facebook is like having a crazy-girlfriend/needy-boyfriend.

  • they "trust me" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    dumb fucks

  • Just create a spam email address (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How hard is it? Change to a spam email address before breaking up with a service

    • So some third party can take over your account and continue to live your online Facebook life for you?

      Solid plan there.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @01:59AM (#56820478)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Just create a spam email address (Score:4, Insightful)

        by default luser ( 529332 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @03:01AM (#56820624) Journal

        Or you could just simplify your life and create auto-sort filters. I created a Facebook folder in my Hotmail account years ago, and I've just forgotten that it's there.

        No control freak domain ownership required :)

        • Re:Just create a spam email address (Score:4, Insightful)

          by johnsie ( 1158363 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @04:18AM (#56820782)
          His method makes more sense than just filters. With a catch-all address you can still have the filters, but more importantly you can see which company a third party company got your email address from.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            you can see which company a third party company got your email address from.

            And then, upon know who leaked your info you do what? Call them and complain? Take them to court? Yeah, right.

            The additional work doesn't amount to any tangible benefit. Just filtering works the same but with less hassle.

            • And then, upon know who leaked your info you do what? Call them and complain? Take them to court? Yeah, right.

              With GDPR, the company has to bear the cost of compliance, not you.

              Unless, of course, you're a second-class non-citizen, like an American, or a Briton in 270-something days.

        • Every mail account already comes with a folder for dealing with mail from Facebook. It's called the Trash.

          BTW, what have you forgotten about? The Facebook folder or the Hotmail account?

        • It's good to get all these notifications and auto-sort them. Sometimes people will delete their borderline criminal comments after a while and the notification email is nice cryptographically-signed evidence.

        • The problem with this method is, a lot of companies will sell your address to spammers. Or they'll alter their marketing messages to make them harder to filter (e.g. changing the address they come from, not keeping any common elements in the subject).

          If you make a separate alias per service, it has two benefits:

          1. 1) It provides an easier, clearer, and more definitive method of getting rid of crap. You don't even need to filter. If one of your aliases starts getting spam, you kill that alias.
          2. 2) You can

        • Even easier...

          Facebook email? Mark as spam.

          Do that to three of their messages and your gmail box will be forever FB free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ( 4475953 )

        Or just use a well-trained spam filter. I'm using claws-mail with Bogofilter and it filters well enough to remove all messages by Facebook, Ebay, Amazon, LinkedIn, etc. If I buy something or subscribe to some new service I have to check the spam filter, of course, but that's no problem.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by GNious ( 953874 )

        GMail supposedly can do the same : add +@gmail.com should work

        eg scsirop+facebook@ ....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikael ( 484 )

      This is a good way. It's not just Facebook that get's a bit clingy. A lot of these online job boards and other websites do the same thing. Even if you have unsubscribed, they still send you some clickbait with annoying messages with an unsubscribe button at the bottom. But you then have to login and/or create an account in order to delete it. But they may just want to verify your email address as well as your postcode and address. So the only way is a disposable burner email address that will disappear in s

  • Cause costs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How about returning the favor? What would cost Facebook the most money? Maybe using GDPR and send non-standard requests and questions that need to be handled manually.

  • Ultimately, the frequent messages reinforced Grabar's decision to stay off the platform.

    Later that day I was back on my old computer... and back, with a quick Command-T, F, enter, on Facebook.

    ?

  • Mistakenly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:53AM (#56820328)

    No. Facebook is in the business of selling my/your information. No mistake at all.

  • Um (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:54AM (#56820330)
    Isn't there a setting where you can get update emails to those things? Cause, turning it off might be a way to stop those emails. Just saying.

    I had a facebook account for like 2 weeks to keep up with a specific event. Deleted the account afterwards, and i haven't had an email from them since.

    • Re:Um (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @02:00AM (#56820486)

      Yup, this is a non-story, intended to allow people to manufacture outrage rather than reasoned discussion.

      If you diligently use Facebook for a length of time, and then stop using it without changing your notification preferences or deleting your account, of course they are going to send you notifications with updates - you *explicitly* allow that through the notification preferences.

      I have a Facebook account, I visit it perhaps once a month - I haven't had an email notification from them in years. That's mainly because I manage my notification preferences.

      What the OP is trying to do is get Facebook to read their mind and stop sending notifications - and then bitching when instead they follow the accounts notification preferences.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        But you may think of the default - sending "digests" - as a dark pattern. The default should be "do not bother me" and everything else opt-in.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          The default should be what the majority if users want it to be.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's not just normal notifications. If you stop visiting they send you special "please come back, look at what you are missing!" messages that are quite different to the normal notification ones. I turned all the notification emails off and still got these "please come back" ones.

        You can turn them off, but it's a lot of clicks and that doesn't lessen the fact that they are using psychological tricks to try to get recovering addicts back on to their site.

        • If you stop visiting they send you special "please come back, look at what you are missing!" messages
          Never got such a message, and most other notifications I have switched off.

      • I used to use Facebook for general purposes for a couple of years. I had it tuned up so it didn't really send me anything, and didn't share more of me than I really needed. When I stopped using it there wasn't a way to actually delete your account (just 'deactivate'), so I didn't bother to do it. I figured after a while they'd get bored and leave me alone. However, I kept getting "A lot's been happening on facebook since you last logged on" emails, with exciting items such as "Julie liked a comment on her p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        Not really a non-story. I have adjusted the settings multiple times. I still get nagging emails from time to time telling me about someone's profile picture change or new photo posted. They are always links to posts that are already 3 to 5 days old.

        It's real.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • It's not quite that simple. I forget what controls they give you, but I remember there being some level of notifications in Facebook that it would not let you turn off, and it included stuff I didn't want.

      Also, Facebook has a history of changing their notification rules and privacy rules without telling you. So you turn off all notifications, and then they create new notification classifications, and all the new ones are turned on by default. I don't know if they've done that recently, but it happened t

    • Three months ago I deactivated my account and I'm not getting any FB emails except when I activate it by logging in from time to time ("Welcome back to FB" it says).

      Interestingly, now I am completely off the habit. My account is active again but I'm not -- I go there every 3-4 days for 5-10 minutes, save a couple of good articles and not comment or like anything. And frankly I prefer that to deleting the account -- now I have the best of both worlds: access to good stuff without the habit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by meglon ( 1001833 )
      Reading all these comments.... maybe your level of activity when on facebook leads to different results. I admit while i was on it i only posted one time, and pretty much nothing else other than read a few things. If you're a lot more active, maybe skynet.. er.... facebook notices more, and tries harder to keep you around. That wouldn't be a normal setting type thing though.

  • LOL. No. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aliquis ( 678370 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:55AM (#56820336)

    https://www.facebook.com/varme... [facebook.com]

    See it? I don't either.

    All you got to do is to try to speak somewhat open-minded about the invasion of your country and the traitors in your parliament on 4-5 accounts of which 2 have more or less the same name. Get 20 or so month long bans in total and off the new "I'll keep this one clean!" and the old 15+ year old account goes.

    Ridicule their laws and ideas and break it and you'll get out eventually :)

  • I still get emails (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:56AM (#56820340)
    I never actually used Facebook for anything. And apparently never using Facebook for anything and not logging in for seemingly a decade if not longer means I'm still an "active member" because "YAY YOU HAVE NOTIFICATIONS AND FRIENDS!!!" .. Even though I never gave Facebook any identity whatsoever (except my email address......................).

    • Yup. FB likes to send lots of completely fake "you have new messages!" emails. FB's shameless duplicity makes it pretty useless as a real communications tool.

      I never "deleted" my account, because I know FB won't really delete the data anyways. I just don't use it. Don't ever login unless I have some very specific reason. (I really wish the local standup comedy group would stop posting their show announcements exclusively on Facebook.)

    • It's trivial to do this in settings. Unfortunate you can't figure this out.

  • DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT! (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @01:08AM (#56820370)

    I did. The emails stopped shortly after.

  • I haven't added facebook to my filters, they don't both me that much, but I've consigned several sites to my dust bin.
    Thunderbird has levels of filtering: junk mail folder, or straight to the trash.

  • This is highly misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @01:18AM (#56820394)
    Choosing not to sign in to a platform you've been steadily using, where you are a member of active groups and have friends (that you follow) who post content ... and then getting updates from that platform telling you the sorts of things that are going on with your contacts/interests - that's NOT "trying to break up." Closing your account is "breaking up." Do that, and you'll stop hearing from FB in short order. Playing coy by keeping your account active and your connections established while not visiting for a week and half - sounds like he experienced exactly what one would expect.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Hay, we can still be friends... Often people want to stop using Facebook regularly but keep an account there so that they can deal with events that people put on there or view the odd family photo etc.

      • Often people want to stop using Facebook regularly but keep an account there so that they can deal with events that people put on there or view the odd family photo etc.

        I agree. My point is that no signing into it for ten days (rather than actively deleting the account) isn't "trying to break up with Facebook." The headline, the summary, and even the whole point of the thing is kinda disingenuous that way.

    • Choosing not to sign in to a platform you've been steadily using, where you are a member of active groups and have friends (that you follow) who post content ... and then getting updates from that platform telling you the sorts of things that are going on with your contacts/interests - that's NOT "trying to break up." Closing your account is "breaking up." Do that, and you'll stop hearing from FB in short order. Playing coy by keeping your account active and your connections established while not visiting for a week and half - sounds like he experienced exactly what one would expect.

      That is not true. I deleted a facebook account that I used for some testing of the Facebook SDK with my work email address and continued to get a weekly email from Facebook asking me to restore my account every week for 3 years before I left that company. There's no such thing as deleting a Facebook account. They will let you restore it with all of its old posts at any time.

  • I made a FB account because my family was all on it and kept nagging me to join in. I finally relented. But politics are driving me off. I don't even like Trump, but the constant "Trump is hitler" posts are fucking nonstop and I'm getting sick and tired of seeing that shit every time I log in. What ever happened to talking about family stuff?

    This evening I finally snapped and called my sister a "fucking idiot" after she posted yet another nazi reference.

  • Think that's bad? (Score:4, Informative)

    by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @02:27AM (#56820540)
    Try cancelling DirecTV. I did, but - dang! - what an experience!
    First, there is ZERO way to cancel online. You MUST call in to them.
    Next, prepare yourself for a lengthy "we can drop your price!" pitches (which, TBH, if that's your game, consider it a freebie from me to you) all the way through - and I am not making this up! - "you're making me very sad by cancelling."
    It ALMOST would have been easier just to cancel my credit card....

    • Most companies require you to talk to their 'accounts retention department' which is a pool of experienced salespeople. Vonage was worse in that they parked your call for at least an hour regardless of salesperson availability. They would then drop your call at least twice so you had to wait an hour each time.

      Next time ask to speak with escalations dept. Tell them you are moving to Liberia to serve a 5 year humanitarian mission and need to cancel the service.

      • Re:Think that's bad? (Score:4, Informative)

        by rworne ( 538610 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @03:38AM (#56820716) Homepage

        You went about it the wrong way with Vonage. I had them for more than a decade because calls overseas are pretty cheap. I never had a problem with them, but the service steady increased in price over the years and I was getting annoyed with it. We have been using FaceTime for international calls for a few years now and I moved over to another VoIP company and all I pay them is about $4.70 in taxes for their free service.

        What I did was port my number over. The second it completed, bye-bye Vonage. They didn't even send me an email about it, they just cancelled the auto-pay, my account vanished off their site, and we wound up essentially ghosting each other.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Simple personal policy, give them a reasonable chance to cancel properly (1 hour on hold is not reasonable), then call credit card and block their charges.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Oh, you know they'd submit your bill to collections if you canceled your credit card. Of course, that retention guy you're talking to gets flogged at the end of the day if he doesn't make his quota -- one of the benefits of outsourcing the phone people to third world countries, but that's not really your problem. If it makes you feel any better, the $1.50 a day they pay him allows him to live like a king there, at least when he's not getting flogged.

    • I did that several years (15?) ago after they decided to piss me off.

      Got the monthly bill, and noticed that the amount had doubled; oops, looks like I either forgot to pay or perhaps the bill got lost in the mail. No problem; I put a check for the full amount in the envelope and sent it off.

      A couple days later, I receive a call from DirecTV, threatening to disconnect my service if I didn't pay them RIGHT NOW, over the phone. I explain that the full amount is in the mail on it's way. Made no difference; p

  • Even when THEY lock you out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BeCre8iv ( 563502 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @02:31AM (#56820550)
    After abreviating my name and being reported (probably by a user of a full pseudonym) FB demanded a scan of my passport or ID.
    14 days afterwards, I waslocked out of my account.

    I still however get notifications, birthdays etc in my spambin and cant make it stop without handing my papers to the
    Internet gestapo.

    While in hindsight they did me a favour bycutting me off before they could build an identifiable profile, FB and their parners can still just zuck themselves.

  • I can't really confirm that experience.

    I deleted my account, and other than one confirmation email plus one with the link to the download of all the data FB had on me I didn't get any "urgings" to reconsider... and by now it's gone for good.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • To be fair, Facebook does give you the option to both deactivate or permanently delete your profile, and in both instances, you get the option to select the option to not recieve ANY e-mails from Facebook. I did that a good while ago, and havenâ(TM)t heard from Facebook since. Simply put, it is not Facebookâ(TM)s fault that this person did not bother to check what options is available in the settings menu, in order to Âbreak up with Facebook.

  • Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Slate (Score:5, Interesting)

    by recrudescence ( 1383489 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @05:36AM (#56820886)
    Alas, thanks to the GDPR, the fine article is hidden behind a website which demands I simply agree to "the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our site, in emails and across the Internet, to personalize content and perform site analytics" as a single, lumped action before I am allowed to read it. Therefore I was unable to read it.

    I very much hope most users prompted with that warning also simply felt unable to read the content rather than compelled to agree to whatever it is Slate is trying to wave off under the umbrella of a single 'Agree' button.

    • Re:Can't read TFA without agreeing to spying by Sl (Score:4, Informative)

      by 4im ( 181450 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @08:28AM (#56821244)

      Then Slate does not conform to the GDPR, and are exposing themselves to being sued by european users. Acceptance for different kinds of use of data *must* be separate, and service *may not be denied* when only the minimum required for delivery of service is accepted (e.g. the online shop 3suisses using your address for delivering goods to you and invoicing you, but denied from selling your data to 3rd parties, where they used to make most of their money).

      Oh well, Slate has a lot of company that way, few have bothered to implement GDPR properly so far. Of course, they'll cry a river when the fines start coming...

      On the + side: the data they are not allowed to collect can't be leaked. Or it'll seriously bite them if they collect them anyway, and they get loose.

      • Oh well, Slate has a lot of company that way, few have bothered to implement GDPR properly so far. Of course, they'll cry a river when the fines start coming...

        Or just GeoBlock y'all.

  • Seriously, how is this news to anyone?

    Because not only have we had multiple stories about the way facebook works when you stop logging in daily over the years, I've personally seen the way it works when I joined back in 2010. Decided it wasn't worth the constant notifications on mobile so I kept it browser-only and would only log in about 1-3 times week and good grief did they spam your email with notifications if you went more than 3 days without logging in.

    However it turns out there's a very simple

  • The solution to stuff like this is:

    1). Get your own domain name and run e-mail off it.

    2). Use a different email address for every bullshit service you sign up for...such as facebook@yourdomain.com, twitter@yourdomain.com, etc.

    3). Forward all such addresses to your REAL e-mail address - the one you check.

    4). When you break up with the bullshit service you signed up for, simply stop forwarding the email.

    There are other benefits to this approach as well. I'll let you decide what they are.

  • And never received a single message from them, then or since.

  • This is why you use a spam email account (Score:3)

    by gatkinso ( 15975 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @08:55AM (#56821352)

    Then you simply delete your account, done.

  • ... because when you disable your account there's one that allows you to allow Facebook to continue to contact you. As long as you choose to not allow that they'll never email you. Nary an email from them since I killed my account. Facebook is a mountain of suck, but so is this story.

  • I had never seen any "join Facebook" ads before.

    But since the last two days, I've seen probably a dozen "Join Facebook today!" ads, including on top of YouTube videos (little banners that pop above the video controls, that you need to close manually - PITA).

  • Spent a couple weeks in a 3rd world country with no reliable access last year. During that time I didn't use Facebook and continued to avoid it for months after returning. Always told friends that Facebook became the jealous ex. "What are you doing?" "We miss you!" "Your friend did something, you should really log on and see what it was." "There's this thing you'd like if you would just come back." "Is it something I did?" Constant emails and pushed notifications.

  • 17 automated form emails over nine days does not amount to merciless harassment. It's not even an annoyance or inconvenience if you just mark it as SPAM.

    This is a non-issue jumping on a bandwagon.

  • ... boiled my pet rabbit.

  • I don't use twitter often, nor linkedIn. After an extended away, the App on my phone started to show notifications from Twitter - and upon logging in there were no DMs or messages, just "missed tweets". Similar experience with LinkedIn. The notification was because twitter hadn't seen in awhile. The emails from both began too. Please login, we missed you. One of them even assumed I had forgotten my password.

    When I unplugged my cable box because I don't use it Comcast noticed. I figured I'd save the

    • I don't use twitter often, nor linkedIn. After an extended away, the App on my phone started to show notifications from Twitter - and upon logging in there were no DMs or messages, just "missed tweets".

      I get at least 10 Twitter E-mails a week; and have only logged in to get an account I've never used, 8 years ago.

    • > When I unplugged my cable box because I don't use it Comcast noticed. I figured
      > I'd save the power bill (dang thing gets warm). Comcast sent me a Letter in the
      > mail with instructions on how to turn it back on. They assumed I was confused and
      > wasn't using it, maybe even afraid to call for help. It is a nice gesture if I was
      > 80 years old and couldn't figure out technology. But they too missed me. They
      > wanted me to know about all of the Terrific Programming that I was missing.

      They wer

  • It should be obvious that everyone should configure their email systems to block all email from all f*c*book domains. (On my network the entire service is blocked, but sometimes you have a f*c*book user in the household)
  • Instagram sent me a "It looks like you're having trouble logging in" email today for an account I haven't touched in years...

  • I haven't logged in to FB in FIVE YEARS and I am still getting 10-20 mails a day from them.

  • ...they still mercilessly email you. When I got locked out of my account and told that my legal ID was required for account access, I didn't comply, though I did respond in hopes of getting my account back. This has been several years now, and I've not been able to stop the notifications. I still have no access. I created a filter in webmail so that their mail goes straight to a folder called Facebook Spam, and I don't have to see it in Thunderbird.

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