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How to permanently delete your Facebook account
- alphabet9000 5y agoDoes FB still attempt to Guilt you when you try to quit, e.g., showing 5 pictures of your Friends saying that your friends will "miss you" ? Brandon will miss you. Catherine will miss you. David will miss you. Kevin will miss you. Sarah will miss you.
- sfblah 5y agoI think I'd rather have a script I could put on a Raspberry Pi that periodically did actions on their site or via APIs to waste their computing power. If a few million people did that, it might make a difference. Sure, they'd try to block it, but maintainers could evolve the software, like ad blockers do.
- fxtentacle 5y agoI like how "deactivate account" still keeps Facebook Messenger fully enabled and all of your posts remain online. That's probably so that your friends can ask you why you deactivated your account ;)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cyberpsybin 5y agoUnpopular opinion: Facebook is quite decent and gives sufficient controls over privacy to its users. Google on other hand is horrendous.
- pmlnr 5y ago> sufficient controls over privacy to its users He? By how, showing a cookie window in EU and not even respecting the settings in there?
- nobody9999 5y ago>Unpopular opinion: Facebook is quite decent and gives sufficient controls over privacy to its users. Google on other hand is horrendous. I'm not concerned about which "friends" can see my posts, it's the platform hoovering up every keystroke. Which in-app privacy controls can stop that?
- micromacrofoot 5y agoYou're talking about privacy from other users, generally when people refer to privacy problems and Facebook it's about privacy from Facebook (most people have none).
- bserge 5y agoTheir definition of taking a break is strange. Just don't visit Facebook lol Also, are they still doing the shadow profiles thing where they create "accounts" for your name in order to entice other people to join Facebook? And if you join, people you might know are conveniently already waiting for you. That always seemed shady as hell.
- oldie 5y agoAs far as I know, they are. And, since I don't have a Facebook account, I can't find a way to submit a GDPR subject access request.
- maxehmookau 5y agoIt's the same language used by gambling companies. "Take a break" rather than "Break your cycle of addiction by leaving us for good". Not entirely surprising.
- mrits 5y agoYou don't defeat alcoholism by giving up a type of liquor. You can't quit Vodka and switch to Tequila and expect to have a different experience. Quitting Facebook/Instagram hurts FB but doesn't do much to help yourself when you do the same things on TikTok.
- markx2 5y agoYou don't need to visit facebook, you just need to visit a page that has their script embedded. nextdns.io does a good job of blocking facebook. They base their block on https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists which has this list https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/facebook.com https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...
- tremon 5y agoThat blocklist is very narrow, I would suggest using https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/lists/facebook-extended.txt https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/lists/facebook-ext... instead. Or just use this RPZ policy (add *.<domain> wildcard entries as well, omitted for brevity): instagram.com. *. cdninstagram.com. *. messenger.com. *. facebook.com. *. fbcdn.com. *. fbcdn.net. *. fb.com. *. fb.me. *.
- bborud 5y agoI think it should be a legal requirement that users are able to configure retention of their data. For instance that any content you post will only be retained for N number of weeks/ months/years. And that social media platforms over a certain size have to agree to auditing to ensure that this data is actually deleted.
- dotancohen 5y agoAs someone who implements these types of requirements, this suggestion just adds complexity where none is needed. In the software, and the database, and the backup strategy, and for the average user. Complexity requires time, money, and introduces bugs and user error. Right now we are required by law to remove user data upon request (Europe). That law is strong enough to cover those who need it.
- Zy-Zario 5y agoActually, Telegram already does that. Similar to how your gmail account is automatically deleted after a certain time.
- sleepyhead 5y agoActually GDPR requires you to delete data when no longer needed. How long data is needed depends on what type of data it is. For example financial transactions are covered by other laws to be kept for certain amount of time. If data is linked to a survey that is completed then, by law, that data is no longer needed and should be deleted. How long should photo likes and comments be kept? I don't think there are good guidelines or judgements regarding this but it is nevertheless something to take into consideration and in most cases delete data based on age.
- bborud 5y agoAre you suggesting that not inconveniencing developers is more important than a right to privacy? I'd have to disagree with you if this is the case. I've worked both for companies that fall under extra scrutiny by government due to market position and for companies that deal with data that has strict retention limits. Yes, it increases complexity, but the laws that seek to protect people's privacy are far more important than any inconvenience to companies. (And yes: in both cases there were regular audits and any lack of compliance had very real consequences)
- 0x_rs 5y agoI wish there was a way to do so without having to ask people you haven't seen or met for more than a decade (if they can even still access) to verify that it is indeed you trying to access with the same mail an account that's been sitting for way too long still. I understand the possible risk and inconvenience, but I can't be alone being struck with an account like that. Hell, I'm too afraid to even see if it's public and visible now, since the last time I tried to delete it (for the fourth of fifth time, because spammers kept turning it back on by trying to login years ago, I presume) it kicked me out before I could accept the new ToS. I haven't received any responses on my queries to provide a contact for GDPR requests that isn't a blackhole, also. I should probably just try sending one at the disabled accounts address too.
- martin_a 5y agoWell, I think you've done everything you can. The GDPR requires a response from the data handler in a timely manner. If Facebook fails to do so, for whatever reason, you're free to contact your privacy/data regulation authorities.
- _ttg 5y agoFaster shortcuts: https://deletefacebook.com/ https://deletefacebook.com/ https://deleteinstagram.com/ https://deleteinstagram.com/ It's probably by design, but from experience most people will need non-trivial discipline/hacks to get around the 30 day window and avoid reflexively logging in. Would be curious to know how many people who try deleting their accounts follow through to the end
- bennyp101 5y agoI deleted mine 3 or 4 years ago, and I did end up logging in a couple of times during that 30 day window - "Oh, I'll just have a quick look at those wedding photos" or "I want to go on that trip so I best keep it logged in for that" kind of thing - purely instinctive at the time to find that info. I imagine if you are hooked on the whole 'social interaction' thing, the 30 day sliding window is ... unhelpful.
- jb1991 5y agoI deleted mine 2 years ago, and definitely followed through on it. Once it was done, it was absolutely zero problem to have it out of my life. The only thing I’m curious about though, is what would happen if I try to login again. I’m terrified to even try, for fear that somehow it wasn’t actually deleted even though that’s exactly what I did. Update: I decided to finally try logging in and thankfully it said it could not locate an account under my email. So I guess that's a good thing. I do wonder if it triggered something else though, just by my trying to login.
- DownGoat 5y agoIf your email has ever appeared in any breaches, your account probably has had many login attempts.
- jb1991 5y agoYes, but were those other login attempts using the actual password that was correct when my account was active? I'm probably just being paranoid... of course FB deleted my account and all its details.
- burnt_toast 5y agoI recently shut down a small business and have been having nothing but trouble trying to remove it's presence online. Facebook made me wait two weeks before giving me the option to delete it and now it's just stuck on "deleting". Bing emails me weekly saying I need to update my listing yet I've tried 3 times to mark it as closed to no avail. The only one I've been able to remove it from has been Google so far. It's quite frustrating.
- black_13 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten I wish this was something that was a universal right. Not just for social media but truly have a right to privacy.
- shadowfaxRodeo 5y agoI got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it. Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent. If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.
- dotancohen 5y agoI could have written this comment word for word. People get _offended_ when you tell them that you don't have Whatsapp. But I let them hold that hot coal themselves.
- zionic 5y agoThis is so strange, no one in my social circle uses WhatsApp or has ever asked me to use it to talk to them. It’s all iMessage, Snapchat, and a growing group of people on Signal.
- shadowfaxRodeo 5y agoUnderstandably, people who don’t use WhatsApp, don’t think it’s weird that other people don’t use WhatsApp. People who do have WhatsApp, probably have it, because most of the people they know have it.
- emerged 5y agoSame here, I’ve never even heard someone I know say the word “WhatsApp” in my life.
- lucasverra 5y agoUsa? Cause what parent described is common in EU + LATAM
- Flashtoo 5y agoI assume you're in the US. In most of Europe Whatsapp is the main communication platform. SMS is dead and Android is more popular than iOS, so no iMessage either.
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- bennyp101 5y agoI actually ended up creating a new Facebook account, with fake name/details and no friends. Most of the local information for the village I live in, and the surrounding ones is posted and discussed on Facebook. So, if we want to join in on the Halloween trail, need to know about it on there. Christmas window displays? Yep, on Facebook. It's kinda annoying, and I figure they probably know who I am - but at least I'm not directly giving them info :/
- MrDresden 5y agoI thoroughly oppose the idea that to be able to have meaningful human relationships, I need to subscribe to a walled garden run by a profit hungry private entity with an extremely bad track record of handling privacy, security and ethics. I exited their whole ecosystem 2 years ago. Never found the urge to go back. Leaving all of the fake-ery of Instagram and noise of Facebook behind has improved my day to day life immensely. Many of my Whatsapp contacts had already begun to move to Signal so that helped. Some of the rest I talk to through Twitter. With the viable rest I call or use sms. A lot of them I just let go (were dead relationships already).
- stevecat 5y agoSomething seems to remain on their servers though. I own a very short gmail.com address which I'm (far too) proud of but it does receive a lot of other people's mail; there are apparently a lot of people called Steve who don't understand how email addresses work. Someone created and then permanently deleted a Facebook account with my address. Which has permanently locked me out of ever using my email address with Facebook (they block +alias addresses and gmail/googlemail.com too). I use Facebook casually to keep in touch with family/friends and have had to keep an old email account alive just for it. Facebook support are no help. /rant
- heurisko 5y agoMy experience deleting Facebook has been strange. Maybe I didn't do it right, but I have continued to receive "sign in with 1-click" emails, and at one time I was notified somewhat disconcertingly that someone had memorialised me. I don't find a problem with WhatsApp.
- willis936 5y agoDeleting social media accounts is a bad idea. You should squat them and never log in.
- acwan93 5y agoI was going to write this. It’s a way to prevent online identity theft, to avoid someone impersonating you online. I kept my social media accounts even though I stopped using them. If someone ever impersonates me, I can use these inactive accounts to say those are definitely mine.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- haunter 5y agoThe irony here that it's harder to delete your HN account and all your comments
- thujlife 5y agoyou cant
- shapefrog 5y agohence the irony ...
- raxxorrax 5y agoHN has anonymous accounts and personally identifiable information can be hidden or removed by the user, which to me has the same effect. HN complains to me that I cannot reset my pwd if I ever forget it because I didn't even share my mail. People often claim anonymous platforms are doomed to fail but I think social media is the main problem currently.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoI changed my HN username earlier this year for reasons. However if you search HN via the Algolia search link at the bottom of this page, you can still find my old posts under my old username. Not to mention the 1,000s of self-hosted HN scrapers out there.
- gonehome 5y agoYou can email dang and they'll work with you depending on what privacy stuff you need, but yeah it's a manual process. People have changed the users on old comments they no longer want associated with themselves and such. There was discussion a while back about it (I haven't taken advantage of this myself).
- asdff 5y ago>removed by the user Only within a certain timeframe. Unlike reddit eventually your comments are no longer deletable or editable by you, and you have to email the webmaster in this case to ask for an old comment to be manually deleted, its not even an automated mechanism.
- swamp-agr 5y agoThe situation is quite interesting here. - Imagine, you're living outside of USA/UK/Europe. - Formally, it's possible to proceed with "Permanently delete my account". - You will even receive email assuring you that two weeks later profile would be completely deleted. - Then, couple years later you'll occasionally seen email from facebook that someone tried to log in into your ("permanently deleted") account. - You'll try to log in, probably restore and change the password among the way. - And after that you'll be successfully logged in. And the profile's state would be like nothing changes. Nothing. Completely. - You'll contact Support. Seriously? They'll ignore you. - Maybe some interaction with 3rd-party websites triggered cancellation of the process, you thought. - Then, you'll implement blacklist just to avoid any interaction with facebook, something similar to: https://pastebin.com/FAV2f9eA https://pastebin.com/FAV2f9eA and try to repeat the flow again. - Then another 2+ years later situation will repeat again. Deja-vu. And again. And again. There's no way to delete facebook profile if facebook didn't really care about its users.
- c8g 5y agoprobably you were in a hurry or distressed and didn't read the text while deleting the account and probably, you have disabled your account. They will offer an option to disable account in case you change your mind later. Please stop spreading misinformation.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoI guess this page monthly hits serve as input for some KPI for their PR dept.
- cascom 5y agoWhy would I want to delete my Facebook account? I abhor Facebook, I never log on, I haven’t used WhatsApp or Facebook messenger, etc. for several years, So I don’t feel like I’m giving them any information, but deleting my account only hurts me by giving away a free option? What am I missing?
- tremon 5y agoYou're adding to Facebook's network value by having a Facebook presence, however minimal you deem it to be. You're inducing other people into giving Facebook information on them by maintaining a Facebook account.
- eddieroger 5y agoIsn't this why they consider Daily/Monthly Active Users and not just accounts? If I have a Facebook account that I never log in to, I'm upping their count of users, sure, but not the DAU/MAU count, which is what marketers care about for reach.
- cascom 5y agoSure, but they're not getting much if anything out of me + i don't to be impersonated / i just view it as a parking a domain
- VLM 5y agoThe way to fight people who advise to use FB less or just don't login and scroll all day long, is to reframe the problem as an extremist binary choice, either use FB three hours per day every day or go to huge effort to delete everything. Most people will choose the less extreme of the "binary" options of continuing to use FB. Its a common sophistry trick.
- cotton-cho 5y agoI deleted my Facebook account straight after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now I just have a fake one as I got an Oculus for my birthday and I also use Facebook to access the Marketplace as Kijiji and Craigslist are sometimes really dry in my area as most people use FB market.
- Program_Install 5y agoI wish more people would consider the deletion of facebooks from their lives. It has become the most dangerous form of SkyNet, and most voluntarily hand their lives to them. Nothing worse than idiots attempting to make themselves relevant for no reason other than trying to be relevant.
- colechristensen 5y agoCompanies tracking and profiting from your every move are everywhere. If you’re not live-blogging your entire life on Facebook it’s really quite far from the worst offender in the surveillance economy.
- Pinegulf 5y agoIsn't 'delete' a bit misleading? The page does not say that whey would delete your data, only 'account'.
- arkh 5y agoSo here is an idea about deleting accounts. Usually people may want to undo it sometime but if it's deleted it is deleted. One of the things required by the GDPR is a way to export your data and even import it (article 20, right to portability). So you should implement a way to do that. Then when users ask to delete their account, create an export, encrypt it with a one-time use key which you mail to the user, store this encrypted dump and remove the rest of the data. Now if the deletion was an error the user can get their key in their email and get their account reinstated. And no one in your company can access the data in the meantime.
- ghego1 5y agoTechnically very smart solution, but legally way too risky. If there's ever a breach, for example someone steals the key and then accesses the data, the fine will be super high given that the company has retrained data after the user asked to delete it. To mitigate such risk, the company would at least need explicit consent of the user, at which point it's just as simply asking the user to not really delete their account. A viable option, legally speaking, could be to send the dump to the user, in a way that can be easily imported back if the user ever wants to login again.
- arkh 5y ago> for example someone steals the key and then accesses the data It was why I schemed it so the key is sent to the user but not kept by you. Someone steals the user key? They can ask for a restore but they won't have access to the data unless they've got the user login info too. An employee steals the encrypted data? Enjoy the time spent cracking the cryptography. A little like one of the solutions for deletion in Event Sourced systems but instead of completely losing the keys, you give it to the user first.
- pcmoney 5y agoWhen I did it in 2016 I wrote a small script to undo every activity I had ever done. Then I deleted it. Also changed the password to a max length so it was impossible to login for the 30days.
- roydivision 5y agoMost of the time tech companies have their fans and detractors. In virtually any discussion about tech companies, you’ll find people for the company in question, and others against, Apple and Google are great examples. I find it interesting that I don’t think I’ve ever come across any discussion about Facebook (and I read a lot of them) where anyone is defending them. Either people are strongly against the company, or at most they admit grudgingly that they do use Facebook services because everyone else they know uses it. The only people I ever hear championing Facebook are Zuckerberg and other top management. I don’t have a Facebook account, so possibly all the positive discussion is on Facebook itself and I’m not seeing it.
- antihero 5y agoI would imagine that the proponents of Facebook are the huge huge amounts of people who are less technologically savvy, don't really give two shits about privacy surrounding data they perceive to given up willingly, and aren't really involved in any sort of discourse. However, they absolutely love the fact that they've been able to keep in contact with family, old friends, and see the value of the human connection they are able to get through Facebook as far greater than the negatives.
- dougmwne 5y agoI'll step into that role then. I am a member of some Facebook groups that have been hugely helpful on a personal level. The community page software may not be perfect, but it is accessible and can bring together a really heterogeneous user base with diverse perspectives, much more so than Reddit. The groups pages are entirely separate from the toxic feed. I would be absolutely bummed if they were to blink out of existence.
- simpss 5y agoAs a counter point to this. Facebook has (tried and mostly succeeded) to replace community forums that used to be either public or with open registration and without the negative effects of facebook. Stuff that's running phpbb or other similar software.
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- usefulcat 5y agoMy first thought was immediately “first, build a time machine..”
- aritmo 5y agoI do not understand what is the fuss about deleting your Facebook account. 1. Create a VPS 2. Install one of those Facebook scraping tools 3. Use your account credentials and start scraping. 4, Facebook will freak out, lock you out and ask for passport and ID cards. Do not provide any. During their next account purge, they will remove your account.
- gambiting 5y agoOr....just click throught the form few times and have it deleted this way, what's the big deal?
- yawaworht1978 5y agoThe best options are: - never sign up in the first place - give entirely fake data, as much as possible - change data to rubbish data afterward - just never log in again, I am pretty sure dormant accounts are the worst, nothing to collect, nothing to track, no ads can be placed there in a meaningful way. A dormant account with rubbish data is the best way to hinder their profits.
- kosasbest 5y agoHad to temporarily whitelist the page and turn on JS to view (there wasn't even a <noscript> message saying I needed JS). Then since I am in Spain, I got a bunch of Spanish, when I'm an English speaker. This is bad UX. I expected better from FB.
- kevmo 5y agoThis is intentional. They don't want you to be able to do this, so they make pages unusable. I tried to delink Facebook and Instagram recently. They make you re-sign into FB via Insta... and it refused to sign me in (I was 100% using the correct password and tried many times). The sign-in just kept failing, until I was like "This is intentional, and Facebook will not let me de-link the apps." and gave up. Really time for the FTC and DOJ to take Facebook all the way to trial for this sort of stuff. No more settlements!
- streamofdigits 5y agoIn many parts of Europe Whatsapp is physically embedded in the landscape (in neighborhood signs of community "watch" groups). People have sleepwalked into a nightmare and nobody is really honest enough to admit it. Banana republics pretending their are sophisticated and caring societies.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoI'm hard boycotting Facebook now. I've never had an account with them and only used WhatsApp, but stopped using that a while ago. Used to enjoy my Oculus Rift, sold it when the forced account merging was announced and bought an Index to replace it. I was at a conference today and skipped a talk by a Facebook engineer. As petty as it sounds, I'm staying clear of anyone or anything associated with FB. Everyone working for them is complicit.
- baby 5y agoLost friends because they deleted their Facebook and I can’t reach them anymore :(
- cblackthornekc 5y agoI did this a year or so ago. I knew it was complete when I got an email from Paypal saying my Facebook account was unlinked. Funny thing...I don't remember linking my Paypal account.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoI am curious as to what happens to the data. This is why we need whistleblowers. It could be very easy for Facebook to knowingly keep this information and just make it a trade secret. The risk of being exposed for lying probably doesn't matter since there are so many ways around it without "lying". But who am I kidding. I would love to know which private company has the most personal info: - Lexis Nexis, - West Law, - Cellphone companies, - TRW (credit rating companies) - VISA (Amex, Mastercard), or - Facebook
- NabiDev 5y agoJust upload some bannable content. That is way faster then regular process.