How to completely delete your Facebook account
How to completely delete your Facebook account
How to completely delete your Facebook account
Closing out your Facebook account isn’t as simple as clicking a button.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Some consider Facebook as a welcome way to keep in touch with
relatives and friends across the world, and interact with groups of people
with similar interests. Other see a darker side filled with political fighting,
privacy oversteps and rampant misinformation.
Others still may just crave a break.
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Whatever your reason, we’ll show you how to delete every trace of
your Facebook account. It’s important to note that there’s a difference
between deleting your Facebook account and deactivating it.
Deleting Facebook also severs ties to Facebook Messenger,
the social platform’s chat app. If you want to also delete Instagram and
WhatsApp, which are Facebook properties, you’ll need to do that separately.
Deactivating your Facebook account temporarily freezes it, which is
useful if you want a brief hiatus. But that does nothing to stop the
company from tracking your online activity. In order to fully cut ties with
Facebook, deleting your account is the only answer. It’s a process that
takes some time and patience. Below are the steps you’ll need to follow,
as well as some factors you’ll need to take into account prior to going
through with it. This story was recently updated.
Delete the Facebook app from your phone
The first step is to delete the app from your smartphone or tablet.
Remember that deleting the Facebook app doesn’t delete your account
you can still access it from the browser and other apps
might still use Facebook as a login.
Removing the icon from your phone gets it out of sight and mind,
but it doesn’t do anything to your Facebook account overall.
You’ll need to make sure you do all these other steps or
Facebook can still track your online activity.
Choose any social platform and messaging alternatives
Remember, when you delete your Facebook account, your access to
Messenger goes with it. Meaning, you’ll need to reach out to
those you frequently talk to on Messenger and figure
out another app or service to stay in touch.
Take the same approach with your Facebook friends in general.
Post a status a few days before you plan on deleting your account, and ask
that anyone who wants to keep in touch send a message with their contact info.
Facebook also gives you the option to transfer your photos, videos,
notes and posts to other sites like Google Photos and Dropbox.
Important: Don’t forget about additional Facebook logins
Third-party developers, such as Spotify and DoorDash, have long offered
to use your Facebook account as a means to sign up and log into their
services. It’s super convenient because it keeps you from having to
remember yet another password. That is, until you don’t have
a Facebook account anymore.
You’ll need to address those outside accounts that rely on your Facebook
info by logging into each account and disconnecting it from your
Facebook account. To find a list of apps linked to your Facebook account:
- Sign into Facebook
- Go to Settings > Apps and websites.
- If you’re having trouble figuring out how to unlink your Facebook account from a service, contact the company’s customer service department for help.
Once that’s done, request and download a copy of all your Facebook
data by following these steps:
- Log into Facebook on your computer
- Go to Settings > Your Facebook Information
- Click View next to Download Your Information
- Leave all of the boxes checked under the Your Information section
- Leave the date range to All of my data.
- Leave the format set to HTML — doing so puts your data in an easy-to-navigate format.
- In order to save high-resolution copies of photos and videos
- you’ve posted to Facebook, change the Media Quality drop-down from Medium to High.
Finally, click Create File. Facebook will then gather all of your information
and send you an email when it’s ready to be downloaded.
It can take some time for this to happen it’s not an instant process.
Now you can delete your Facebook account
The final step is to delete your account. To do so, visit this page and sign in.
Facebook will give you a list of tasks and things to consider before
deleting your account. For example, you’ll be advised to download all
of your information, or if you’re the sole admin of a Facebook Page,
you’ll be asked to grant another account admin privileges, otherwise,
the page will be deleted alongside your account.
Alright, you ready? Click Delete Account, enter your password and
click Continue. Finally, click Delete Account again and you’re done.
You have 30 days to change your mind about Facebook
Facebook will take up to 90 days to delete all of your account data from
its servers. For the first 30 days of that, you can still sign in and cancel your
deletion request. Your account will be restored and it’ll be
like you never left. For better or worse.
To cancel your deletion request, visit Facebook.com, log into
your account, and click the Cancel Deletion button.
