Reading this blog by Don Dodge titled Free services come with strings attached, I am reminded of my struggle to get my web pages deleted from a TW RoadRunner server. I had an account with RoadRunner several years ago. Since they offered disk space for paying customers, I created and hosted my web site on their server. Once I moved out of Ohio, I cancelled my account with TW RoadRunner, and assumed (stupid me) that they would purge the accounts and web pages of expired/unpaid/cancelled/terminated accounts.
Boy, was I wrong. My web pages are still around on their server even after two years!!
Some of you might be saying "Hey, that's free web hosting for life. What are you crying about?"
Unfortunately, you cannot modify the pages, and you no longer have control over them. And, worst of all, it is a pain (so far) to get them to remove your pages. Their "tech support" doesn't seem to know how to purge web pages and accounts!
The only reason I want to get rid of my old pages is that several links on the page are stale, and I have pictures of "Our Home" which I no longer own. In order to be fair to the current owner, I cannot even modify the title to "Our former home".
This is a first hand lesson that once you post something on the Internet (even if it is on your own server) it gets a life of its own, and there is no way of bringing it back into the bottle.