Has Twitter Deleted My Account?

I said in a previous article on this site, that Twitter doesn’t always stick to the precise 30-day period for account deletion after you deactivate. Ever since my own Twitter account remained undeleted for nearly four months after I deactivated it, I concluded that the process isn’t an exact science. More recently, however, I’ve been doing some research into the subject, and I’ve found that in most cases, Twitter will delete an account shortly after the 30-day deactivation period elapses. The exact timing has varied, according to my observations, but most typically the deletion has taken place between 31 and 34 days after deactivation. Again, this is my own study, and I’ve only monitored a limited number of deactivated accounts, but that’s the picture I’ve seen.

So, how am I determining all this? Have I set up a load of Twitter accounts, then deleted them, and then tried logging back in?… No. And in fact, if you did that you’d never be able to compile a study, because if you try logging in and the account still exists, it reactivates. That means you have to deactivate once again, and the 30-day period strats from scratch. You never get to find out when the account would have been deleted, had you not logged in.

But there is an easy way to find out whether or not a deactivated Twitter account is still there. All you need, is this Web address…

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=

Copy and paste the above line into your browser's address bar, and then, after the “=” sign, with no space, type the Twitter username of the deactivated account you want to check. Don’t add the “@”, by the way.

So, if your username is @PlanetBotch, in your browser’s address bar you should have this…

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=planetbotch

Hit Return or Enter, and your browser will attempt to access the RSS feed from the account in question. If the account has been deleted, your browser page should produce something like this…

“Error Code 34 – Sorry, that page does not exist”. All the Windows browsers I tried gave me a variant of the “Error Code 34 - Does not exist” message, although the formatting did vary from one browser to the next. The captures I’ve posted, incidentally, are from the current Opera browser.

However, if the account has not been deleted, you’ll get something different. With accounts which were only deactivated (but not deleted), the browsers I tried varied, but all gave a result distinctly different from the above. Opera and Chrome gave me a “Not authorized” message, like the one below…

And that’s exactly the difference. When the account has completely gone, the browser will literally report that it doesn’t exist. But when the account is only inaccessible (i.e. deactivated but not deleted), the browser will try to gain access, and fail. As I mentioned, Opera and Chrome reported that they weren’t authorised to access the account. However, Internet Explorer reported “Cannot display this feed”, and Firefox merely retained its existing page and refused to go anywhere at all.

But constantly, with all the browsers I tried, when the account had been deleted, the browser reported “Error Code 34 – Sorry, that page does not exist”. Therefore, it’s pretty safe to conclude, I believe, that at least at the time of writing, this error code verifies that the account has been deleted. The other browser reactions verify that it's still there, and would be reactivated if you were to log in.

Please let me stress, however, that a "Does Not Exist" screen when you search for an account on the Twitter site itself does NOT necessarily mean the account has been deleted. You must enter the RSS feed address I gave in this article, into the address bar of your browser, in order for this to work.

SUSPENDED ACCOUNTS

Finally, this also works with suspended Twitter accounts. You can tell if the account is only suspended and still in existence but inaccessible, or if it's been completely wiped out by Twitter. If it's completely gone, you'll see the “Error Code 34 – Sorry, that page does not exist” message. If it still exists, you'll see one of the other results. However, in every case with suspended Twitter accounts - even accounts which I saw get suspended last year - I've found that the account is still there. It appears, then, that as a rule, Twitter does not delete suspended accounts, even after twelve months or more. It looks like they just remain inaccessible on an indefinite basis. Whether Twitter would delete a suspended account if the account holder requested a deletion I don't know. I've never had a Twitter account suspended and I'm not about to go onto Twitter and get suspended in order to put it to the test.

DISCLAIMER

This practice should be regarded only as a guide to what's happening with a deactivated Twitter account. If you want to retain a deactivated Twitter account you should not risk leaving it deactivated a moment longer than the official deactivation period as specified by Twitter, at the time of deactivation. Ideally, of course, if you want to keep the account, don't deactivate it! Ultimately, it's up to the owner of a Twitter account to conclusively establish whether or not his/her account has been deleted, through direct communication with Twitter. The author of this article accepts no responsibility for any consequences you may encounter after deactivating a Twitter account.

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