If you do a quick search for “delete my account”, you’ll see loads of threads started by individuals asking to have their posts and accounts removed. Even though the answer is almost always a no, it makes sense why people would ask; most people feel very uncomfortable with the idea of having things they wrote as a teenager immortalized on the internet. Young people in particular are also more likely to skimp on reading the terms and conditions of a site. A lot of times, even the people who do read the terms and conditions aren’t immune to regretting posts that seemed harmless at the time they were made.
College Confidential policy states that accounts will not be deleted ever, in order to prevent holes in the archives. Posts may be edited with help from a moderator, but it’s not very common. It makes sense why College Confidential wouldn’t allow users to randomly delete their posts whenever they wanted to, because threads would become nonsensical with the missing information. Taking this into account though, even without giving users the option of deleting their accounts and posts, there are still other measures that can be taken to improve privacy and user peace of mind on College Confidential (something especially important on a forum used by minors).
The first thing I can think of is allowing users to make their profiles anonymous. There are other forums that have allowed this. As of right now, anyone can click on someone’s username and access their entire posting history. By giving users the option of making their account private instead of public, threads would remain intact and privacy would be greatly improved. This is the easiest fix I can think of that wouldn’t alter the actual information in a thread.
There are other options as well. I’ve seen forums before that have allowed anonymous posting, or the ability to mark a post as anonymous after it’s been made. College Confidential could also be more lax on their editing policies - a 15 minute window is long enough to correct a spelling error that’s been caught, but most users who want to delete their accounts or posts take much longer than 15 minutes to come to that conclusion. I don’t think spelling/minor information errors are the biggest reason individuals desire to edit or remove posts either. Was there ever a time when College Confidential kept their editing option up at all times?
Those are the only ones I can come up with right now, but I’m sure there are more. Does anyone else on here have any ideas on how to make College Confidential more private for their users? I don’t know if anyone will see this or if this thread will make a difference, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
Respectfully, I disagree.
The easiest way to deal with this…posters should be careful what they write. Think first and post second. That is the easiest way to deal with your issues.
In my experience, the more that is not open the more chance for folks to be less courteous…because they can hide behind the ability to hide posts.
Yes, I’m afraid tr0lls would multiply if they knew people couldn’t check out their previous contradictory posts.
@thumper1 - that would be an ideal world. But your solution leaves no room for human error. It’s going to happen, whether or not it’s a nice thought to think otherwise. The only difference is that unlike many other things in life, the internet is permanent. A lot of older adults today didn’t have to deal with that kind of pressure when they were teenagers. Even those who follow the “think first, post second” mantra aren’t immune to regretting what they say. People grow up. They mature. Opinions change over time. Maybe the parents on this forum could be held more accountable, but to think that a teenagers College Confidential profile is going to be an accurate representation of who they are as adults is a little far fetched.
When people sign up on CC, they agree to the Terms of Service, which clearly state that posts aren’t deleted. It’s a good idea to know what you’re agreeing to when you sign up for something!
Besides, do you think somebody in 2025 is really going to look up your posts? How are they going to know who Abcde11 is?
We get delete requests every day from posters who write something like, “I’m an Asian student at a top Texas high school with a 2200+ SAT score…” They swear that this is going to identify them! It really makes us shake our heads. If a person mentions a specific high school, we WILL delete that for them.
@MaineLonghorn - most sites have to deal with trolls. But why should the possibility of trolls come before the very real concerns of users? I don’t know why having to weed out a few bad eggs would come as a priority to user happiness. Trolls may abuse the power (in which case, they would just be banned), but there would be far more responsible users who would respect it. Think of all the students who don’t want to share too much detail in their posts, knowing it would create a permanent profile of them. I think user privacy should always come first. Just a thought
Sorry, didn’t know tr0ll was a bad word
I agree. User privacy is important. Each user is well able to protect their own privacy themselves…by posting only what they want shared.
@thumper1 - I agree with you. But once again, this completely ignores human error. It’ll happen. There’s no way to stop it. What else would you expect from a forum meant for students?
@MaineLonghorn - Fair enough. So long as College Confidential honestly, truly cares about user privacy and not having accounts linked back to real identities, I guess no one should worry.
Right…your real identity is not put all over College Confidential. It’s not. No one will know your name, address and phone number unless you write it (and truthfully, I have seen personal identifying info like that deleted).