Leaving Facebook? You can try... but 'evil genius' social network won't make it easy
The tide is turning against Facebook - last month, more than 100,000 Britons d their accounts on the social networking site.
But committing ‘Facebook suicide’ is not as easy as you might think.
If you are truly determined to do the deed there are two options: you can deactivate or .
Deactivation is the soft option. You can do this by chosing ‘account settings’ and clicking the ‘deactivate’ button.
But, in a stroke of evil genius, Facebook then confronts you with pictures of your friends and messages saying how much they will ‘miss you’.
Swallowing the lump in your throat, you then have to opt out of Facebook emails - or the site will continue to taunt you with messages about parties and events you are now missing.
Even then, deactivation does not actually get rid of your account but leaves it ‘hanging in a cloud’, waiting for you to scurry back.
Deletion is more terminal and the social networking site doesn’t make it easy. You have to search Facebook’s servers for how to do it and then send in a request which has to be confirmed by email.
Facebook insists that within two weeks every single trace of you will be gone from its servers, with no chance of getting it back.
But even then you will still have a presence on the website if any of your Facebook friends continue to put up photos of you.
So there would be nothing to stop your friends uploading photos of you on your stag do, skinny-dipping, or at graduation celebrations.
And nothing to stop your boss finding them.
Facebook潮流正在發生逆轉——上個月10萬餘英國人刪除了自己在社交網站上的賬號。
但是“Facebook自殺”可不像你想的那麼容易。
如果你確實打定主意要脫離社交網站，你有兩個選擇：你可以註銷或刪除你的賬戶。
註銷賬戶是比較方便的選擇。你可以選擇“賬戶設置”然後點擊“註銷”按鈕，就完成了。
但是，突然間，就像邪惡精靈一樣，Facebook會讓你看到你的`好友的照片和他們會如何“想念你”的信息。
在努力壓制慾望的同時，你必須選擇拒收Facebook的郵件，否則Facebook會繼續用你想去的各種聚會和活動的信息折磨你。
就算如此，註銷也不能讓你完全擺脫你的賬戶，而是讓它“掛在雲端”，等着你把它要回去。
刪除賬戶則更徹底，不過社交網站不會讓你輕易刪除。你必須在Facebook的服務器上搜索刪除的程序，然後發出請求，還必須經過電子郵件認證。
Facebook堅稱，在兩週內你所有的記錄都會從服務器上消除，也不能再恢復。
但是即使這樣，如果你的任何一個Facebook好友繼續上傳你的照片，你還是會在社交網站上露面。
如果你的朋友要上傳你在單身聚會或畢業典禮上的照片或你的裸泳照，就沒有任何辦法可以阻止了。
同樣地，也無法阻止你的老闆找到這些信息。
Vocabulary:deactivate: to cause to be inactive; remove the effectiveness of（停用，撤銷，使無效）
soft option: 輕鬆（省事）的選擇；捷徑；較爲方便的出路
opt out of: 決定退出；選擇不參與
taunt: to try to make somebody angry or upset by saying unkind things about them, laughing at their failures, etc.（辱罵；嘲笑；諷刺；奚落）
scurry: to run with quick short steps（碎步疾跑）
stag do: a bachelor party, also known as a stag party, stag night 男子婚前聚會（常招待男性朋友）
skinny-dipping: nude swimming, swimming naked, i.e. without any swimsuit（裸泳）
