Hello everyone.
A while ago I got the message on both Facebook and Instagram to either consent to viewing targeted ads or paying the subscription fee. I did neither, and it soon went away. Since yesterday though, I got it again and have no access to any part of facebook, most importantly the accounts section of the settings from where I can delete my account.
How can I delete my account without consenting or paying the fee?
Thanks in advance
Make a GDPR complaint and hopefully Facebook get a huge fine
I would like to but I have no idea what to write in it. Also, based on previous interaction with my DPO at the time of the reddit fiasco (and if I’m not mistaken as per the GDPR) I first have to attempt to contact the entity holding my data before filling in a complaint form. Furthermore as I have stated in another comment, I have completely lost faith in my country’s DPO after having to go through them for reddit’s non-compliance with the GDPR, and honestly believe they are just incompetent and don’t fully understand the laws their entire position was created to defend.
No
You can send a formal letter requesting that all your data be deleted, stating that you can’t log in and do not agree with their ToS. Theoretically they have to do it. Good luck.
Do you have an elected representative who can put this question to them?
I have little faith in my country’s data protection officer who is responsible for handling stuff like this. I had to deal with them while making a complaint about reddit not complying with the GDPR by not allowing me to remove upvotes/downvotes in a reasonable manner, and also after manually deleting all my posts and comments there were still 2 comments that show up on my reddit profile only if it is viewed “signed out” (i.e. from an incognito browser), but not while I am signed in to the account. There is no way to delete them from within my account. The reply I got from them after several months was that since there was no identifiable data in those 2 comments and since after deleting the account it would show up as u/deleted that my case was closed.
The incompetence of my government officials (more so than any other country) would be a laughing matter if I wasn’t so angry about the whole situation.
tl;dr: My country’s data protection officer and office is a joke and I have lost faith in them to be able to handle anything. I am considering going directly to the Irish DPO if that is who meta ultimately answers to.
I am in the same situation, If you just want to delete your account, it seems accessing this url: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account does not trigger the consent message.
If you want to access Facebook and Instagram without accepting the ads, there are some weird ways I found that kind of works:
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For Instagram in a browser you can go to https://www.instagram.com/consent/?flow= this will go to a page that says “Sorry, this page isn’t available.” but you can then go to the homepage without triggering the consent message. (some actions like loading a story will though) Another way on mobile (tested on Firefox android) is to start from the browser and when the consent message shows up click on the 3 dots → “Open in an application” the app then open to a blank page and you can go back to home.
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For Facebook this tricks doesn’t seem to work, but other ways seems to, like using https://mbasic.facebook.com/
