I discovered a website recently called JustDelete.me that serves as a way to help people delete troublesome online accounts that make it hard to delete them. WordPress.com is one of the worst offenders; it doesn’t allow accounts to be deleted at all. To be fair, it does allow people to delete “identifying data” associated with an account, but not delete the account itself. JustDelete.me also points to WordPress.com’s relevant accounts page that offers more information. I’ve never tried to delete my WordPress.com account, so this is news to me. I wonder why they can’t be deleted.
2 thoughts on “WordPress.com, undeletable accounts”
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It’s odd because I know that in the past, people could claim dormant usernames/URLs for blogs.
Dormant URLs for blogs is not the same as a user ID.
That said, I suspect it’s because deleting a user will delete all their posts and comments on all blogs using the WordPress.com network, and that is a pretty squidgy thing when you get down to it. If you decide to delete your account, what happens to the 100 posts you made on someone else’s blog? They vanish. And what if you didn’t tell this other person?
After all, how would WordPress.com know who to assign those posts too upon account deletion?
It’s certainly the easy way out, as I’m sure a solution could be crafted, but I can see, today, it’s not an option.