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Are you trying to stay anonymous on Reddit? If you’ve already tried creating burner accounts, you should consider periodically deleting your old Reddit accounts as well to make it harder for people to use your post history to find information about you. And if you need to go the nuclear route, you can permanently delete your Reddit account and nuke your old posts.
Should you delete all Reddit posts before deleting your account?
Every single thing you post on Reddit is going to stay on the internet forever. There are multiple websites that cache posts and comments from Reddit. Even if you’re extremely particular about deleting everything you post every 24 hours or so, it’s easy to find what you’d posted. If you’re truly worried about keeping sensitive information off Reddit, you should either avoid posting it entirely, or anonymize it enough to protect your privacy.
Avoid naming your employer, friends, family members, or your location on Reddit. If you delete your Reddit account, your posts and comments remain on the site but the username changes to [deleted], and it’s not easy to search for all of your posts that way.
How to delete old comments and posts from your Reddit account
If you want to quickly scrub a couple of sensitive posts and comments, you can go to your Reddit profile and remove them yourself. To do it, log into your Reddit account and click your username in the top-right corner of the page, and select Profile. Select the Posts tab at the top of the page and hit the three-dots icon next to any post, and select Delete. You can visit the Comments tab and do the same thing.
If you have too many posts to delete, you can consider using a tool such as Power Delete Suite to scrub everything from your Reddit profile. This is a JavaScript bookmarklet, which means that you can visit the website and drag the red Power Delete Suite button to the bookmarks bar in your browser.
Screenshot: Pranay Parab
When you’re ready to delete everything from your Reddit account, be sure to log in first and then click the Power Delete Suite bookmark. You’ll see a prompt that asks if you want to go to your user profile. Click Yes. The tool will show you a bunch of options to check which posts you want to delete—you can choose to edit posts and replace them with junk text instead of deleting them, or edit and delete. You can also filter out some subreddits and avoid deleting gilded or saved posts.
When you’re done reviewing your options, click Process and Power Delete Suite will begin removing everything from your Reddit account. A few minutes later, you’ll see that the process has been completed, and then you can click Download Exported Items to save all of your comments and posts.
How to permanently delete your Reddit account
Screenshot: Pranay Parab
Deleting your Reddit account permanently can be a tad bit confusing because Reddit calls it deactivation instead of permanent deletion. Rest assured, if you click the Deactivate Account button, your Reddit account will be gone forever.
To proceed with this, go to account settings on Reddit and scroll to the bottom. Click the red Deactivate Account button.
Screenshot: Pranay Parab
Remember, this process cannot be reversed, so go ahead only if you’re sure you won’t be needing the account anymore. You’ll see a prompt asking for your feedback and reason for deletion, but you can ignore all that and enter your username and password in the fields, and check the box labeled “I understand that deactivated accounts are not recoverable.” Click the red Deactivate button, and click it again in the subsequent prompt. Congratulations, you’ve successfully deleted your Reddit account for good.
