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How to permanently delete Facebook account
- imperator 16y agoThank you for posting this. In light of the recent stuff that Facebook has done, I'm deleting my account. I'm glad I'm not alone in seeking the information on how to do that exactly.
- sushi 16y agoI have also deleted one of my facebook account which I could earlier just deactivate but never delete.
- tokenadult 16y agoI keep the Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703 "How to permanently delete your facebook account" in my Facebook profile. I found this through a very easy Google search.
- nob0dy 16y agoOut of curiosity, what stuff that facebook has done recently makes you want to delete your account?
- tripa 16y agoWhy would it have to be recent?
- bartl 16y agoBecause that's what he said. >>>In light of the recent stuff that Facebook has done, I'm deleting my account.
- lambda 16y agoStarted giving your personal information away to third parties without your consent. Deliberately ignored your privacy settings when doing so; even if you had your account set to the strictest privacy settings, they still started giving your information away to Microsoft, Pandora, and Yelp. Slightly longer ago, suddenly changed everyone's privacy settings from defaulting to sharing most information only within your network (college, city, etc) to sharing it publicly. Basically, they've repeatedly reduced the privacy of your account, causing you to reveal potentially embarrassing information to a much wider audience than you had intended. In some cases, you could get the old privacy settings back, but only by laboriously going through many pages of privacy settings and resetting them, every time Facebook rolls out another such update.
- zaphar 16y agoThis should really be as simple as a single button. It wouldn't even significantly reduce their membership since the average person doesn't care. It would however improve their image.
- liuliu 16y agoCan this really be implemented? No system in that size can invalidate any information in every CDN center instantly (or even in bounded time). The fact is, once your information is online, it will never go.
- bobbyi 16y agoPeople who accidentally hit that button would not be happy.
- eam 16y agoJust throw in a couple of 'Are you sure you want proceed?' confirmation messages and it's set.
- patio11 16y agoThat is false security of the type much beloved by engineers. It fails for all sorts of cases, such as people who are less literate than you are (ask me about the time our outsourcing team Hit Next To Continue without being able to read the Japanese trac interface they were using -- better yet, don't ask), vindictive ex-girlfriends, dormroom pranks, etc, etc, etc, etc.
- whereareyou 16y agoOne day you may really regret this
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoI didn't. Deleted my account a few months ago, and have not looked back. My reasons were probably 40% privacy issues (I felt at the time that facebook was going the wrong direction) and 60% just to avoid the massive time sink.
- guelo 16y agoHow to delete your HN account: 1. You can't. 2. ??? 3. HN is evil!
- frossie 16y agoYour HN account is not linked to your real identity, unless you want it to be. Many people think that's a big difference.
- ivankirigin 16y agoChanging your name on facebook is easy. I hear it is common when high school students apply for college. The site works best with your real social graph, imho, but it is easy to enhance your calm re: privacy
- pak 16y agoAll name changes have to be approved before they go into effect, at least from what I remember. They actually have human reviewers approve every change. If the name seems fake, they deny the request. I read an article once about people with fake-sounding but real last names like Batman, etc. having their name change requests denied, and needing to convince Facebook employees of their own identity. They have gone to great lengths to ensure their data on you is tied to a real name.
- chronomex 16y agoYes, they confirm name changes, but I don't think they're very strict about it. Some anecdotal evidence: My Facebook middle name is Emacs. It used to be 'emacs'. I have three friends who share a Facebook account, which is probably against the TOS anyway. They change the name rather frequently. Last month they were named Krishanu Coke Zero Austin Steve.
- code_duck 16y agoI tried signing up for Facebook with the name 'Jimmy the Greek' and it was denied. However, they then accepted 'Jimmy teh Greeko'.
- rooshdi 16y agoI too wonder why Facebook makes it so difficult for users to permanently delete their accounts? It should be a straight forward and simple process, yet Facebook doesn't even make this option easily locatable through their service. They should at least openly explain to their users why the deletion process is in its current form (user experience, security, spam reasons, etc). However, making the deletion process so isolated and obscure, without an official explanation, only makes me more skeptical of Facebook's agenda.
- greyman 16y agoMaybe to prevent deletion on impulse?
- gojomo 16y agoOr by a prankster with temporary access/credentials.
- adammichaelc 16y agoAn email is sent to the user to notify them that their account has been queue'd for deletion - after that it takes 14 days for the deletion to happen, during which time a simple login will cancel the deletion request. So I doubt it's about pranksters. These other controls seem adequate to prevent that type of thing.
- qq66 16y agoThe worst case is when someone gets temporary access to your EMAIL credentials. They do a "forgot password" on Facebook, delete your account, then delete the confirmation email. Of course, someone with access to your email can do far worse things than delete your Facebook account.
- benologist 16y agoA million years ago we used to do that to our friends ICQ account.... it got to the point where he started keeping seperate list of all the skanks he was chatting up.
- eam 16y agoMethod number 3: Violate Facebook's TOS. One instance would be to upload a nude photo of someone or for the brave souls, one of yourself.
- tokenadult 16y agoDon't you think that Facebook would keep all of your information in its files, even if not publicly viewable, for its own legal protection if you tried something like that?
- greenlblue 16y agoI'll tell you what happened in 14 days.
- Estragon 16y agoI did it ages ago. Worked for me.
- njn 16y agoThanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 542,011 times. I would like to see how Facebook's recent developments are affecting their member count.
- cb18 16y ago"It should be noted that quite how deep your deletion goes is highly questionable: does facebook still store your information even though you've destroyed your way of accessing it?"
- code_duck 16y agoI have no doubt that they keep your info. If nothing else, it may be helpful if law enforcement or a court came looking for info. Soft delete is generally a best practice anyway, as far as I know, and also, it is convenient for referential integrity.
- code_duck 16y agoI'm proud to say that I mistrusted and hated facebook from the very beginning, and don't have to delete my account because I do not have one I've used for anything other than to sign in and look at pages that require one to be signed in. That's right: I'm so hip, I knew Facebook was a horrible, horrible company which I hate before it was cool to think Facebook was evil.