For whatever reason you may have, one day you might find yourself wanting to delete a Facebook account. Perhaps you had a few accounts and want to delete the extra ones. Maybe you want to start fresh and add as friends only the people who mean a lot to you these days. Or maybe your slightly-changed surname wasn't enough to stop the people who you're hiding from from finding you.
Despite your reasoning for wanting to do so, deleting a Facebook account can actually be a little tricky. This is because Facebook want to give you every possible opportunity to change your mind, so if you use your account in any way your deletion process will need to be restarted. Today we'll take you through the steps to make deleting your Facebook account as simple as possible.
Has Your Account Been Hacked?
If the reason you're considering deleting your Facebook Account is because your account got hacked, you should probably read these articles first. You may find you can solve your hacking problem and salvage your Facebook account.
- 4 Things To Do Immediately When Your Facebook Account Is Hacked
- How To Find Out If Your Facebook Account Has Been Hacked
Can You Still Log In To The Account You Want To Delete?
Even if you can no longer log in to your Facebook account, there are ways to gain access to it or to just delete it. For instance, it's possible to get several trusted friends to help you prove to Facebook that the account is yours. Conversely, if you just want to delete it and you think someone else has hacked the account you can report it as being compromised and Facebook staff will delete it for you. More details can be found in this article:
Prepare Your Groups & Pages For Your Account Deletion
If the account you wish to delete is an admin of a Facebook page or group, ensure you add another account of yours or some good friends as administrators before you delete the account. If you've put a lot of work into your page, you will want to ensure it's left in good hands. This is especially important if you administer a page for a business you work for as you will create a big headache for them if no-one else is made admin before you delete your Facebook account.
Remove All Apps From Facebook
When deleting your account, Facebook requires that you do not log in for two weeks after your request is made. This means that if you accidentally log in to another website using your Facebook credentials during that two week period you'll have to re-start the deletion process. So, in order to ensure there are no accidents, you'll need to delete all the applications associated with your account.
To delete Facebook applications, head to your Facebook home page and click on "App Center" on the left, then choose "My Apps" from the menu on the left. Now, just keep clicking the crosses on the right-hand side to get rid of them all. When they are all deleted, you'll still need to remember not to re-enter your Facebook details on any site or in any application during that two week period.
Note: It is also recommended that you remove linked accounts too. For instance, you have linked Google and Facebook if you have set up your account so that you're logged into Facebook whenever you are logged into Google. However, the option to remove linked accounts is no longer in Account Settings > Linked Accounts (as Facebook still claim it to be), so I can only presume linked accounts are now controlled via your applications list or no longer exist.
Delete Your Facebook Account, Don't Deactivate It
Don't be confused between deactivating and deletion. If you deactivate your account via Account Settings > Security then Facebook will still keep all of your information from the account safe in case you ever want to reactivate the account. It's not the same as deletion!
To delete your Facebook account, first head to the help page and check out all the questions people normally have about account deletion. You can also back up your account data just in case you might need it. Then, when you're really sure you want to go ahead with it, here is the big red button.
It will give you a message reminding you to ensure you don't log in for two weeks, but then it will helpfully log you out before you have a chance to read it properly. Note that if you change your mind at any point in the next two weeks all you need to do is log into Facebook and the deletion process will be cancelled.
Next Steps
Now that you've deleted your account, why not try a Facebook alternative that doesn't steal your data?
Did you have any problems deleting your account? Tell us about it in the comments!