So after listening to “This Week in Google: Episode 39“, I really began looking at why I was keeping my Facebook account.  With all of the “unknowns” about Facebook Connect or the Opengraph API, or whatever it’s actually called, I simply refuse to keep it alive any longer.  Especially after discovering some things about Facebook’s owner, and reading this post on Gizmodo.

The simple truth is that facebook has made it so difficult with it’s myriad of privacy settings that I can no longer protect any data that I may have stored there (which isn’t much).  Worse still, through the use of this new API, I can’t prevent my friends data (public and private) from being accessed.  If that is truly the case, the scenarios I can imagine simply are enough for me to take down my Facebook account.

When I heard that Leo Laporte was going to delete his account, it was just icing on the cake for me.  In fact, below is a video of Leo deleting his facebook account while recording a show. 

Please watch the video and if you’re as concerned about the problem as I am do what he did – delete your Facebook account by logging on to Facebook and then following this link.

The biggest thing to remember once you go down the deletion path:  You have to wait 14 days before the account (and the data) is actually gone.  During that time, if you touch your Facebook account in any way (and I would assume that smartphone apps would be included) then the account is back and is once again able to divvy out your information.

My advice: Delete your account now and never look back!

If however after reading all the information that I’ve provided here you still feel that you need to retain it, then look at this article and this article on wikiHow for the proper security settings.  Like I told my daughters, who both have Facebook accounts, think about the implications and if you choose to keep using Facebook, do it responsibly.