Facebook, facing anger from wannabe ex-members who have discovered that their information is retained on the site, has changed its procedures for deleting an account, reported The New York Times.

According to The Times, Facebook modified its help pages on Monday to tell people they can email the company to remove their accounts entirely; the company may plan to do even more.

"We're always working to improve the user experience," Katie Geminder, director for user experience and design at Facebook, said in a statement sent by email on Tuesday to The Times.

"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," she added.

Geminder told The Times that Facebook's policies were a reflection of the fact that many people came back to the social networking site after they stopped using it. "On any given day, the number of users reactivating their accounts is roughly half of the number of users deactivating their accounts," she said.