Initially, the three graduates from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam developed their tool Suicide Machine Web 2.0 to make a statement about how social networks compromise personal privacy.<\/p>\n
But what initially began as a practical joke for Danja Vasiliev, Gordan Savivic and Walter Langelaar, has become an unexpected success since the software was first launched on December 19.<\/p>\n
By late Januuary, their website had received more than one million hits. Thousands of people have downloaded the software, while 1,500 people have effectively used it.<\/p>\n
“We have already removed more than 90,000 friends and 300,000 tweets,” Langelaar told the German Press Agency dpa.<\/p>\n
“We started this project because each of us felt uncomfortable with social network sites,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Several years ago, when LinkedIn was just launched, a friend told me he made a profile for me on that website. That was an awkward experience for me. I trusted this man, yet suddenly all my personal data were online.<\/p>\n
“Back then it was not yet possible for LinkedIn users to delete their account. It subsequently took me more than two weeks of intensive e-mail correspondence with the LinkedIn staff before they agreed to delete my data,” Langelaar added.<\/p>\n
Most social network sites have since developed their own privacy policies and also enable their users to delete their accounts.<\/p>\n
“But all your data remains in cache, sometimes for many years,” Langelaar says, adding that computer-savvy people could retrieve such information easily.<\/p>\n
“Also, whatever you have written from your social network account on other pages, remains visible.”<\/p>\n
And more dangers are looming, says Langelaar.<\/p>\n
“Facebook plans to introduce a paid service, perhaps by making a partnership with one or more major internet providers. <\/p>\n
“If this happens, people who are not paid users will probably lose access to their own private data. How do you even know what a major company wants to do with your personal data and with whom it wants to share those data?” Langelaar asks.<\/p>\n
This is where Suicide Machine Web 2.0 comes in. So, how does it work? You download the software, which is based on so-called Selenium software mostly used to test web applications, to your own computer.<\/p>\n
Then you run the program. Interestingly, it does not delete your account on the particular social network you want removed.<\/p>\n
“Suicide Machine merely empties the entire contents of your social network account,” Langelaar explains.<\/p>\n
“In other words: all your tweets disappear, including those that have since appeared on other websites.”<\/p>\n
By focusing on deleting all content, the tool ensures all personal data in cache also disappears, although, Langelaar admits, it cannot be predicted how long that takes.<\/p>\n
“By contrast,” Langelaar notes, “if you delete your Facebook account today, the company merely ‘unpublishes’ your account, but all information remains in cache.”<\/p>\n