How To Permanently Delete A Facebook Account
Here is the shortcut link to the official Facebook account deletion page.
Try the step-by-step guide for a clean, dignified exit.
A deceased member's account can be memorialized or deleted.
The Facebook Account Deletion Process
Your account will be ‘deactivated’ for two weeks. After this period it will be permanently deleted.
Do not login to your account during this time. It will cancel the deletion request.
Do not be fooled into switching to a deactivation request. Deactivation is NOT deletion.
Consider an account deletion epitaph to notify friends of your departure.
What Happens To Your Data?
In theory, deleting your account immediately removes all Facebook data related to you. In reality it's more complicated, taking about 90 days.
Allegations of complicity with National Security Agency surveillance suggest that your data may never truly be deleted.
You can still cleanse your Facebook presence for everyone else,
- Delete any sensitive content that you have posted.
- Contact friends about content that you would like deleted.
Backup your data before deletion if you'd like a copy.
Leaving Social Data Behind
As hard as you try, some personally identifiable information may remain. This could be something as simple as your name on a message.
You have little control over this or what others share about you in future. The most you can realistically do is ask your friends to respect your privacy.
Data shared with apps and advertisers is with them forever. As a Facebook user you are leaving behind a valuable personal data footprint.
What To Do Next
Facebook can track non-users via the ‘like’ button and other similar means. You can minimise this and protect your privacy from Facebook and others.
- Use a privacy focused browser like Brave, or try a tracking blocker in your favourite.
- Consider a reputable VPN like Freedome.
Facebook owns WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus and can share data between these and its own products e.g. Facebook Messenger. Keep this in mind when using their apps.
Enjoy Your Freedom
‘And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’
— Sir John Dalberg-Acton.
Facebook In The Media
- 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach (Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian).
- Deleting Facebook? Here are the best alternatives for what you'll miss (Louise Matsakis, Wired).
- My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data (Ian Bogost, The Atlantic).
- Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone's Mic (Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal).
- The naked truth about Facebook's revenge porn tool (Violet Blue, Engadget).
- Facebook is a ‘living, breathing crime scene’ says one former tech insider (NBC News).
- We Can't Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself (Sandy Parakilas, The New York Times).
- Reaching people on the internet (Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal).
- How Facebook's tentacles reach further than you think (Joe Miller, BBC).
- WhatsApp to start sharing user data with Facebook (James Vincent, The Verge).
- Facebook Wants to Help Sell Every Ad on the Web (Jack Marshall, Wall Street Journal).
- Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News (Michael Nunez, Gizmodo).
- Facebook betrayed us by secretly lobbying for cyber-surveillance bill (Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing).
- The Facebook of the future has privacy implications today (Farai Chideya, The Intercept).
- Facebook's tracking cookies affect even users who opt out (James Vincent, The Verge).
- The Insidiousness of Facebook Messenger's Android Mobile App Permissions (Sam Fiorella, Huffington Post).
- Facebook Experiment Manipulates Emotions Of 600,000 Users (Sophie Weiner, Animal New York).
- It's Complicated: Facebook's History of Tracking You (Julia Angwin, Pro Publica).
- Facebook to Use Web Browsing History For Ad Targeting (Cotton Delo, Advertising Age).
- Yahoo, Google, Facebook and more face fight to salvage reputations over NSA leaks (Lisa O'Carroll, The Guardian).
- NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others (Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian).
- Facebook's new policy changes allow it to read your face, use it for ads (Lauren Hockenson, GigaOM).
- Facebook's Creepy Data-Grabbing Ways Make It The Borg Of The Digital World (Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch).
- And plenty more…