http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://aurelianito.blogspot.com/2009/12/como-me-echaron-de-facebook.html&sl=es&tl=en

This is the original article (in Spanish):

http://aurelianito.blogspot.com/2009/12/como-me-echaron-de-facebook.html

In this case, Facebook not only banned the user without providing a valid reason (their reasons contradict each other) but they also refused to delete the account data as well. So not only they can ban you, but they’ll also keep your data in their servers forever.

Google turned me down, saying their investigation was “inconclusive.” Their form has no opening for a comment. I could prove I’m the true previous owner if they just let me. I will try what someone suggested here, keep submitting every day. Thank you for the insights!

Thanks for any help

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons/2008/02/25/cartoons_20080218?slide=12#showHeader

For my blog, I simply copy and paste the entire blog into a Word document (photos and all), and update that every month or so. You can also just turn it into a PDF if you prefer. There are even companies that will make your blog into a bound book.

For those whose mail is hosted on heavy machinery (for better or for worse), there are many products that will “back-up” or offload your web-mail, but use with caution. If you’re not familiar with how they work, you could end up blowing away some or all, of your mailbox.

You can use these free programs (below) to port your mail over to Outlook and then from Outlook save it as a PST file and burn it. If you try to export too much mail at one time, your provider will shut you down temporarily. Additionally, if you have mailbox folders, these clients may or may not allow you to map those folders, (I haven’t tried all of these clients). Also, they don’t grab old Sent Items.

Again, be careful because once you install these, you could find that deleting from Outlook deletes the original, and/or if you don�t check-off �leave a copy on the server� you may pull a Hoover on your entire Inbox. All the above caveats being stated, these can be very useful:

http://ypopsemail.com
http://www.freepops.org
http://mrpostman.sourceforge.net
http://fetchyahoo.twizzler.org

To this day I don’t know what I said on Yahoo Answers that provoked such an extreme response from Yahoo, but I do know that I didn’t say anything that a reasonable person could consider criminal or obscene. And even if I did do something that justified expulsion from Yahoo Answers, why should I lose my email and my personal photos? Taking that further, if Yahoo merges with another company, does that mean that in the future if I do something to violate the rules at Yahoo, I’ll lose access to my Microsoft Hotmail? Or my Windows operating system? Or my AOL broadband? Or my cable TV? Or my cell phone service? Will I lose my email if I’m late making a payment on my Yahoo Visa card?

This was a case of Yahoo robbing me of my online life as a way of punishing me for expressing my opinion, and in the United States of America, I find that disturbing. It’s also offensive because sites like Yahoo Answers profit from the contributions of their users, yet are so arrogantly ungrateful to the public which provides them with content they don’t even have to pay for, that they feel entitled to arbitrarily rob their users of personal data without warning or recourse.

And who says that because the service is free, the company has no obligations to those who use the service? Companies like Yahoo and Google profit from those of us who use their services, just as they profit from the internet itself, a resource that belongs to the public. Television is free, does that mean that broadcasters have no responsibility to serve the public? Of course not. Whenever people build a community, they are entering into a social contract, with rights and responsibilitities for all parties. There’s no reason the same principle should not apply to those who are in the business of building communities online.

according to this, you CAN have your facebook account deleted:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=283731
“Facebook’s Brandee Barker sent in a response to this post:

“There are two different ways to remove your information from Facebook. The first is to deactivate an account. Once a user deactivates the account, his or her profile becomes inaccessible on the main Facebook service, and the data is kept by Facebook only to allow easy reactivation. The second option is to delete the profile altogether. When a user deletes his or her profile, personal information — such as name and all email addresses associated with the account — is deleted from Facebook servers. If a user decides to join Facebook again, he or she would need to create a new profile. We are working to better explain the simple deactivation process, and to ease the deletion process for those who want their personal information removed from our servers.”"

Personally, I don’t use Gmail because I don’t want Google trawling through my e-mails for a way to advertise to me. I don’t want my e-mail permanently stored (whether I’ve deleted my access or not) until the end of time. I already am annoyed that Usenet news postings of mine fro 18 years ago are available on Google’s servers.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. are not your friends. You are a source of *revenue* towards them.

I keep my e-mail on an imap server that I have control over. The same goes for my web pages. I can move them to another location, delete them, etc. as I wish. Sure, that isn’t an option for everyone but you’re better off using, say, e-mail through Speakeasy than a giant beast like one of these MegaCorps.

You should especially avoid having your entire online life based around access provided by a single entity. What happens when that entity folds or, for example, is bought by a competitor that you dislike with markedly different policies?

People need to be a little more paranoid.