• The New York Times, Wednesday, February 13, 2008 11 AM

Facebook has changed its deletion policy. Until this week, Facebook only offered a deactivation option, which kept copies of former profiles on the company's servers--although users could completely erase their data through "a cumbersome manual method." The revelation sparked another privacy backlash, as annoyed users joined the group "How to permanently delete your Facebook account." Since the initial Times story ran on Monday, the group's membership more than doubled to 7,000.

However, now Facebook allows users to send out a form that completely deletes their profile, although it's still unclear whether Facebook retains any information about its former users. The company claims that it used to keep copies of user profiles because so many of its users returned. "On any given day, the number of users reactivating their accounts is roughly half of the number of users deactivating their accounts," said Katie Geminder, Facebook's director for user experience and design.

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