Screenshot: David Murphy
Back in the good old days, we encouraged you to consider deleting your Facebook account because of privacy breaches that left your personal information vulnerable to nefarious bad actors the world over. And we can all still agree that isn’t great. But the last new years have given us many more reasons to want to wash our hands of the internet’s most omnipresent social network, not the least of which was a whistleblower’s recent accusation that the company notably incentivized the dissemination of misinformation on its platform because it was more profitable to do so. Data hacks are bad, but fueling the fires of hatred and bigotry—and promoting a distrust of evidence-based science during a pandemic—is arguably worse.
So delete Facebook already. This checklist will tell you how to go about it.
How to delete your Facebook account
Deleting your Facebook account is easy—too easy. But I’m unconvinced that the process actually does everything you want it to do. Yes, your account goes away and people can’t tag you in things anymore. Yes, Facebook should delete all the data you’ve associated with your account. But does it really do that? Really? I’m cautiously optimistic.
According to Facebook, deleting your account means:
“You won’t be able to reactivate your account.
Your profile, photos, posts, videos, and everything else you’ve added will be permanently deleted. You won’t be able to retrieve anything you’ve added.
You’ll no longer be able to use Facebook Messenger.
You won’t be able to use Facebook Login for other apps you may have signed up for with your Facebook account, like Spotify or Pinterest. You may need to contact the apps and websites to recover those accounts.
Some information, like messages you sent to friends, may still be visible to them after you delete your account. Copies of messages you have sent are stored in your friends’ inboxes.”
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To get started, all you have to do is click this link, select the “Delete account” option, and let ‘er rip. Don’t log into your account while Facebook is removing all your data from its servers, which could take up to 90 days for Facebook to finish. After that, your account is gone for good—and all your data, too, one hopes.
Take a more nuanced approach to account deletion
Screenshot: David Murphy
Like I said, it’s easy to nuke your account from orbit, but you have no way to be sure that Facebook isn’t saving some of the data you’ve given it. Or, worse, that your friends aren’t helping the service create some kind of shadow profile about you—some hidden chunk of related information that Facebook can easily associate with your personal information should you ever decide to rejoin the service.
This sounds a little tin-foil-hat, I realize, and there’s no way of knowing that Facebook isn’t archiving every single data point you ever send to the service—making any attempts to obfuscate or delete it somewhat pointless. But I think it’s OK to be more skeptical than accommodating in today’s digital world. If I was deleting my Facebook today, this is how I’d do it:
I’d download all of my Facebook data, because you never know when you’ll need it again (and you might want the memories, too)I’d remove all third-party apps or services I’ve used my Facebook account to log in with (or otherwise associated with my Facebook account). I’d make sure I’m logged out of any and all devices that have accessed Facebook.I’d remove all authorized devices that can log into Facebook without a special login code.I’d delete any special app passwords I’ve created.I’d consider using an extension to batch-delete my Facebook timeline (just for added peace of mind), though this might take a long time.I’d delete my location history (three-dot icon in the upper-right corner).I’d delete all the contacts I’ve uploaded to Facebook.I’d turn off Face Recognition (just in case).I’d delete any payment information (including credit cards) I’ve stored on Facebook. I’d also remove any associated email addresses.I’d start to obfuscate my information. It’s a little “security theater,” because there’s no way to tell whether Facebook keeps data you’ve changed. (I bet it does.) Still, it doesn’t take that much time to switch your Facebook email address to something new and temporary, remove your phone number, ditch your address, and delete (or change) any other critical information that others might know about you—information Facebook could potentially extract from them to maintain a secondary profile of your deleted self, as I touched on earlier.Phew. That’s that. Did I leave anything out? Are we feeling better yet?
This article was originally published on Oct. 2, 2018 and updated on Oct. 14, 2021 to add up-to-date context to the lede and update linked locations that changed in the interim.
