Deleting old internet accounts?

Rhino

I've been on the internet for awhile and have accumulated tons of online accounts. I've been trying to close some of them, but seems like a huge pain in the ass.

I found this site, which is nice for popular ones. But doesn't help much for all the odd forums I'm subscribed to:
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/


My friend told me "Just change all your contract info/password and put a bunch of really offensive text/pics on the account. That's the quickest way to get it deleted " He jests, but after fighting with a lot of these sites I think he might be right. Still though, I would like a more diplomatic approach.

Is there any type of formal "Delete my account and all it's information" request? I know spam laws require them to offer an easy opt out. Is there anything like that for easily nuking accounts?

spool32

It's still the wild, wild west out here. You're pretty much on your own trying to delete things you opted into, esp. forum accounts and things of that nature.

EggyToast

I don't worry about forum accounts I don't use; they're generally just "out there," and tracking them all down can be impossible unless you always save your registration emails. If they sit unused, occasional forum mods will clean out their account log, especially for smaller forums.

Tox

As far as forums, the only thing you can do is recheck ToS/CoC/Rules type posts and try to find out who you could talk to (Like Tube or Ramius here, for instance) that could get your account permanently locked.

I don't even think they delete accounts here, though.

japan

Tox wrote:

As far as forums, the only thing you can do is recheck ToS/CoC/Rules type posts and try to find out who you could talk to (Like Tube or Ramius here, for instance) that could get your account permanently locked.

I don't even think they delete accounts here, though.

They don't. Deleting accounts causes huge database problems with most forum software, so usually the best that can be down is to ban the user or otherwise deactivate the account so nobody can log into it.