"wordpress.com accounts cannot be deleted"

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  nothingwillbesomething · Member · Apr 11, 2015 at 8:10 am

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  “wordpress.com accounts cannot be deleted” is not a very nice thing to read. Why can’t I chose to stop something I’ve voluntarily started?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  kokkieh · Staff · Apr 11, 2015 at 8:26 am

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  Hi there. The reason you can’t delete your account is for your protection, so others cannot claim your username and impersonate you. http://en.support.wordpress.com/deleting-accounts/

  However, the only details you were required to provide when signing up for your account was an email address. WordPress.com will never send you spam to that email address and also won’t sell it to third parties, as clearly stated in their privacy policy. You can disable all email notifications from your account settings:
  https://en.support.wordpress.com/email-notifications/

  If you change that email to a throwaway address there will be no way your account could ever be linked to you. Any other personal information that you added yourself, you also have the power to delete yourself. See timethief’s instructions in this post on how to do that: http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/06/02/deleting-accounts-blogs-and-content/

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  nothingwillbesomething · Member · Apr 11, 2015 at 8:31 am

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  Thank you for your quick reply.

  Hi there. The reason you can’t delete your account is for your protection, so others cannot claim your username and impersonate you.

  Could this not be more easily -and securely- accomplished by retiring the username once it is deleted instead of putting it back in to the pool?

  In a related matter, this is not actually a support request but a post in a privately held, publicly visible forum which itself cannot be edited or deleted. Is that correct?

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  kokkieh · Staff · Apr 11, 2015 at 8:38 am

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  Could this not be more easily -and securely- accomplished by retiring the username once it is deleted instead of putting it back in to the pool?

  I honestly don’t know, but I’m sure the policy makers and programmers at WordPress.com considered this option and had their reasons for picking the current system. And this particular policy has been in place for a long time, so it’s probably what works best for them.

  In a related matter, this is not actually a support request but a post in a privately held, publicly visible forum which itself cannot be edited or deleted. Is that correct?

  All posts in this forum is public, yes (and indexed by search engines, if that matters), and cannot be deleted. The exception is if someone posts something like personal contact information which could be a security risk. In such cases staff typically just redact the relevant details from the thread, but I’ve never seen them delete an entire thread. Also see: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/wordpresscom-forums-community-standards?replies=1