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In the face of criticism of its policy of keeping personal details on its servers when users chose to deactivate their accounts, Facebook has now provided an email address where users can request that their accounts are deleted.

The Privacy and Security section of the site's Help pages explains that a form has been added to the Deactivate Account options.

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decided not to provide a mechanism for users to delete accounts themselves, but says that it is keeping the situation under review.

"We are measuring the effects of the change we made yesterday, and if we think more needs to be done to improve the user experience for deleting an account, we'll test different implementations and measure them accordingly," says Katie Geminder, director for user experience and design at Facebook.

Geminder explains that many users who deactivate their accounts later return to the site, so it is in their interest to retain their Facebook data. "On any given day, the number of users reactivating their accounts is roughly half of the number of users deactivating their accounts," she claims.

Magnus Wallin, who founded the "How to permanently delete your Facebook account Facebook group welcomes the change but says that it does not go far enough. "Why hide the option far down in the help pages? And why make it a form? Do I first have to go hunting for HOW to leave, and then explain WHY?," he wrote on the group's page. "This is a decent first step, now implement the long awaited delete button, thanks!"