Locking users in 1 Nov 2007

We've been meaning to post this for some time now...Privacy International has issued a great report - called "Dumb Design or Dirty Tricks?" - that describes how popular websites are failing to provide an easy or obvious way for users to delete their accounts. Here's an excerpt:

"Amazon provided the most blatant example of companies that refuse to provide account delete facilities...creating an account is relatively simple...However nowhere on the site can a customer actually delete an account. A trawl through all the 'useful information' statements ('customer charter', 'privacy notice' and 'privacy policy', 'security guarantee' and even 'sign out from our site') reveals nothing about closing your account, deleting your personal details, or terminating your relationship with Amazon. Even the site's search function is useless for this: you can only search for products for purchase, not for information on how to manage your account. In fact, a search for 'delete account' even points to advertisements from 'sponsors' on how to open bank accounts."

Of course, this isn't due to a lack of attention to usability or "dumb design", it's a "dirty trick" - it's a deliberate attempt to subjugate users' attempts to leave. On the face of it, this type of tactic seems to provide no obvious business benefit to those who employ it. Customers who want to escape these services have (presumably) already decided that they aren't going to spend any more money on them (and annoying these customers with a complex "unsubscribe" process is hardly going to help change their minds about this). However, look a little more closely and you'll see that there's a lot of value associated with hanging onto dormant accounts.

Firstly, the size of an online company's customer-base is a key element in defining its market value and also, its worth to advertisers. Thus, an unscrupulous company can boost its perceived value by including both active and dormant user accounts when quoting user numbers (i.e. as opposed to quoting the number of active users alone - which would provide a far more accurate picture of the state of the nation). Secondly, for sites that use collaborative filtering technology (e.g. to provide product recommendations based on the behaviour of like-minded individuals), user accounts provide a useful source of information about people's purchasing habits, regardless of whether they are dormant or not. Thirdly, there's always the chance that some deserters will want to come back, thus retaining their accounts provides them with an easy means of doing so.

So while a confusing account-deletion process may be unscrupulous, it certainly isn't unprofitable.

[via fulminate]