Image source @pexels
Wen 丨 深火 (ID: shenrancaijing), author 丨 Zou Shuai, editor 丨 Tang Yahua
It is easy to go online, but it is difficult to get out of the Internet.
Not long ago, the China Consumer Association released the "50 APP Account Cancellation and Automated Recommendation Unsubscription Evaluation Report", which named 20 APPS with difficulties in canceling accounts, including commonly used APPS Taobao, Ele.me, McDonald's, Tencent Video, China Southern Airlines, etc. The existing problems include not indicating the cancellation conditions, unreasonable conditions, unreasonable process settings, etc.
Deep burning found that there are many netizens who are troubled by account cancellation. To sum up, netizens feel that it is difficult to cancel the account in finding the entrance, the process is too complicated, the review takes at least a week, etc., so that many people's final solution is not solved.
Some people complained, "When registering an account, you only need a mobile phone number and verification code, and when you cancel, you have to have the front and back of your ID card, and you have to hold a photo of your ID card." "Some people have also encountered even more bizarre requests to hand copy the cancellation confirmation letter and affix a fingerprint. Netizens said that the design of such a complex process is to show that they do not want users to go.
Worse still, a successful account closure does not mean complete freedom. Netizens said that it was difficult to log off through the layers of levels, but they still received text messages from the APP.
"Wide in and strict out." Miao Miao, product manager of the Internet company, gave Shen Yan a straightforward reason.
Let's go back to the product level to talk about this, if you don't cancel the APP account, what risks do users have? What does "strict out" mean for apps? Is there a better solution for the user's freedom to go back to the network?
"Mistakenly registered a crowdsourcing platform, and you must become a rider before deregistering"
It is difficult to cancel an account, and it is difficult for some apps to provide more information than when registering when they cancel.
User Xiaoyu told Shen Yan that she mistakenly regarded Cainiao's Dian I Da as a flash delivery class of the same city running errands APP, and after going in, she directly logged in through the Taobao account. "The next page after logging in is the labor agreement, let me sign to become a rider under the point I reach the crowdsourcing platform, and my ID number and name are written at the B B at a glance."
The platform allows Xiaoyu to sign a labor agreement source / courtesy of the interviewee
Xiaoyu found that she was mistaken, but did not agree with this agreement can not enter the APP inside, she had to search the Internet to find the point of my customer service phone, "The robot guidance tone also said, I am a rider please press 1, I am a merchant please press 2, I had to press a 1." ”
"You can sign the labor agreement and click on the page to cancel it yourself." Xiaoyu was very devastated after receiving the response from the human customer service, and you came and went with the customer service for several rounds, and did not get another set of solutions. Customer service also told Xiaoyu: The system found that you are a delivery man.
"Because I insisted repeatedly, another customer service called me back and explained that they were crowdsourced platforms, so as long as the user logged in, it would show that they were a rider, but if they did not sign a contract, they would not officially become a rider and did not need to perform the contract." You can only sign the agreement to go in and cancel yourself, otherwise you will leave the information in the platform, and the customer service says that there is no impact. Xiaoyu had no choice but to give up, "After all, I can't just sign a labor agreement randomly." ”
To cancel, you must first sign a labor service agreement, do not cancel, leave the information on the platform, this problem has entered a dead end.
User Sinan told Shen Yan that when she applied to cancel the game "Ukiyo for Qingge", she also encountered a similar "one-for-one" operation. "I always brushed the ads for this game in Tencent Video, and I downloaded it after watching more and feeling a little interesting. When I registered, I filled in my mobile phone number and ID card number, and after playing for an hour and didn't want to play, I planned to cancel my account. ”
Sinan found the official customer service on QQ, and the customer service gave her a link, which asked her to provide photos of the front and back of the ID card. Customer service replied: "If you do not provide it, you cannot log out." She found netizens with the same experience on Weibo, and the other party successfully cancelled with the "Fun Friends" platform, which belongs to the same company as Ukiyo Qingge. However, through the "fun friends" cancellation must also provide the front and back photos of the ID card, but also hand copy the account cancellation confirmation letter and affix a handprint. Sinan, like the little fish, gave up the struggle.
Sinan's conversation with customer service Source / Courtesy of the interviewee
The situation encountered by Sinan and Xiaoyu is not an isolated case, and the 20 APPS named by the China Consumer Association still have many problems in canceling their accounts.
The China Consumer Association pointed out in the report that there are 50 tested objects, covering 10 categories of online car-hailing, instant messaging, online payment, online shopping, catering and takeaway, transportation ticketing, housing rental and sales, car service, online live broadcasting, and online video and audio.
Among them, the Wanshun ride-hailing APP did not indicate the account cancellation conditions in the page; Dida Travel and McDonald's could not use the same mobile phone number to register again for a certain period of time after canceling the account; Lily Network and Wing Pay did not allow the cancellation of accounts with outdated information, and could only be cancelled after updating personal information; Wing Pay, 1905 Movie Network and Hungry Mo must meet a certain registration time to cancel; Taobao, Happy Purchase, maple leaf car rental are required to complete the transaction after a certain period of time to cancel.
In addition, Soul, TT Voice, China Southern Airlines and Tencent Video have also set a "cooling off period", that is, after the user applies for cancellation, he needs to wait for as little as 7 days and as much as 60 days to complete the cancellation, and the cooling off period can be revoked at any time, and even logging in again is revoked.
Situations that make users worse, such as manual review and no acceptance, and can not be directly logged off through the APP also appear in the report of the China Consumer Association, and some netizens see the list and say: This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Source / Report of the China Consumer Association
Because there is no set of common standards for APP cancellation of accounts, the cancellation process is complicated and complicated, so that users can't feel their heads. Especially in the case of asking for identity documents and requiring the signing of contracts, not to mention whether it is reasonable, it is psychologically difficult for users to accept this condition first.
So, what are the risks of not logging out?
How risky is it that the account is not logged out?
Sinan and Xiaoyu finally failed to successfully cancel the account, and some users said that from the beginning, they felt that the cancellation process was too troublesome, and they did not want to cancel this thing at all, "simply uninstall, note that it does not matter if you do not log off."
If you don't log off your account, just uninstall the APP, will it have a big impact on users?
Senior product manager judge explained to Shen Yan that there may be two layers of data security risks for users who do not log off their accounts. First, if the database of the platform is attacked, the user information is at risk of leakage, and the second is that the user himself is lost due to the loss of the mobile phone or the mobile phone number is recovered and re-released by the operator, which may bring security risks. However, in the second case, many platforms will take risk control measures, such as sleeping users suddenly logged in, the platform will do several checks, first to see whether it is a robot, and then see if it is me, some APP will further add restrictions on user permissions.
To put it simply, as long as the user's information remains in the platform, whether you use it or not, there may be risks. However, from the actual situation, the platform database attack is not common, the user's own leakage of information also has a protective condition, according to this logic, not logging out will not have a substantial impact.
However, some users told Deep Burn that they had encountered other problems.
One is text message harassment. User Jiang Yun has registered several online loan APP, "I heard about several online loan platforms at that time, out of curiosity, downloaded it to see how to operate and how much money can be borrowed." ”
After that, she often received customer service calls asking her if she wanted to borrow money, "two or three times a month." "Jiang Yun was overwhelmed and decided to cancel them one by one." There are several direct cancellations, but there is a pleasant loan, I communicated with customer service many times, they said to send me an email, and then let me fill in the information through the mailbox, the process is particularly complicated. In addition, online customer service is difficult to contact, manual phone calls can not be called in half a day, and a little thing has not been completed for a long time. ”
In the end, Jiang Yun gave up and logged off, and to this day, she is still receiving a call. "There are even some online lending platforms that I have not registered, and they have called me." She doesn't know if there will be information exchanged between online lending platforms.
Source / pexels
The second is the inconvenience caused by the replacement of mobile phone numbers. User Ziyu registered the WeChat APP with his mobile phone number a few years ago, and bound WeChat by the way. Recently, Ziyu changed her mobile phone number, although she can still log in to the WeChat store normally, but she still feels that it will be more convenient to change the bound mobile phone number. "There is an option to change the phone number in the APP, and there are three ways." Ziyu said.
However, in actual operation, these three ways are all difficult for Ziyu. Choose the original mobile phone number to receive the verification code, can not receive; choose the password to log in, the system notifies "due to system maintenance, the account password verification method is temporarily unavailable"; choose to forget the password, the result is to upload the front and back of the ID card and a photo of the ID card, which makes her feel that she is violating personal privacy.
There are troubles about not logging out, and some users have troubles after logging out. Many netizens said that they have logged off Soul for a long time, but they still often receive text messages: who is who comes to see you.
What will happen to users who log out of their accounts on the platform side? An unnamed person revealed that it mainly depends on the size of the company, in principle, the data should be deleted after the cancellation, at least it must be desensitized, that is, to delete user-related information, but some small companies may not pay special attention to this matter.
The judge explained that after desensitization, the UID (user account) used by the user will be recycled and stored in the platform. If the user returns one day and registers with the original mobile phone number, the platform will assign a new UID to the user and will not return the previous set of data. "It's the equivalent of what an anonymous person has done on this platform, and it's hard to trace it back to a specific individual." But if the user clearly cancels the account, the next time with the same mobile phone number to register again, after entering the previous information is still there, it will not be quite right. ”
In theory, desensitization is a critical step, the completion of desensitization, the logged-out user is just a string of meaningless UIDs within the platform. However, if even the basic operation of desensitization is not completed, it means that the user's detailed personal information is still secretly stored on the platform, and the so-called cancellation is only to fool the user.
Obstruct user logout, what does the APP want to do?
As for why it is so difficult to cancel an account, the reason that users generally speculate is that "the platform does not want me to go". It is true that the platform should ensure the retention rate of users by lowering the registration threshold for APP accounts and raising the threshold for cancellation.
When you come, just download the APP and click on a module involving the user's personal data to start the registration process. From the product point of view, the registration itself is also a low threshold, low cost behavior, in addition to bringing new user data to the platform, basically no additional costs; when going, the logout key is generally placed at the three or four levels of entrance, most of them have to open "my", find the settings, pull down to the end, in order to see.
Why should the platform rack its brains to retain users?
The judge explained that for the platform, this is now a data age, different from the past era of growth. Most companies will take user data to do personalized recommendations and data statistics, each user data is part of the platform data system, so after the user logs off, the data is also removed, and the analysis of the entire platform will have some impact. "The platform will want to make better use of the existing users and data in its hands, so user data is very important to the platform."
Miao Miao told Shen Yan that some APPS stipulate that the matrix number is bundled and cancelled, which is also for the reason of trying to ensure the retention of users. Previously, some users reported that the cancellation of idle fish also needs to be cancelled Taobao, but now it can be cancelled separately.
Miao Miao explained that the platform attaches great importance to the user scale of several matrix numbers, not to mention that the development of multiple matrix numbers is to accumulate business in different fields, users in an APP, often receive download ads for another APP, "so the cost will be much lower than their own new." ”
Guaranteed retention is only the most superficial reason. The deregistration process is so complex that the platform has some considerations.
The first is to avoid risks.
This may explain why you need to provide an ID photo when you log off. The judge said that when the user logs off, the platform needs to confirm that it is the person and intends to operate. Filling in the form and ID card photo can prove that it is the person, preventing mobile phone theft, account information leakage, and causing others to steal the user's equipment and information to cancel the account. The purpose of holding the ID card is to prove that the user himself is consciously operating, not unconsciously or misoperably. Also, in order to prevent the user from returning to the user one day after canceling the account, the platform will be more rigorous.
The second is to retain the content structure.