What does it mean when someone's profile says theyre gone away from SW for a while?

xx is away from Similar Worlds at the moment.
Contact with this user may be limited. When xx returns, this restriction will be removed.

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SW-User

It means, they're profile has been deactivated. That notice will disappear once they reactivate.

What confuses me, is occasionally I've clicked on a profile, and it takes me to a blank page that says "this member is no longer on similarworlds". So I figure they must have deleted their profile permanently, only to discover they've come back at a later time. I've yet to figure out how to deactivate my profile in that manner, just the former.