With the recent Facebook protests over its privacy stance and two significant organized events taking place, you might be asking yourself whether it’s really worth deleting your Facebook account. It’s always smart to make sure that your privacy settings are updated and ensure that your level of comfort is maintained. But, should you see that it’s not in your best interest or feel safe having your data out there – or just simply want to “stick it to the man”, then you have the option of deleting your Facebook account.
But before this can be done, you should be aware that there are two different types of account removal: deactivation and deletion…both mean two very different things and you should understand what you’re doing before you choose one and have some unintended consequences.
Deactivation of an account
What does it mean to “deactivate” your Facebook account? Well according to Facebook’s definition:
If you deactivate your account, your profile and all information associated with it are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook users. What this means is that you effectively disappear from the Facebook service. However, we do save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.), so if you want to reactivate at some point, your account will look just the way it did when you deactivated. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and expect their information to be there when they return to the service.
What this means is that you can still put your Facebook into a more temporary hiatus and hide everything from any activity. Your friends nor the public will not be able to see your account, but it won’t be permanently deleted. Think about it as if you’re going to go away on a trip and don’t want anyone to pay attention to your Facebook profile. By deactivating it, you’re putting it into temporary storage. If you want a break from Facebook, but aren’t up to the point of you actually deleting your account, then deactivation is probably the best bet. This is probably not one of those things to be done frequently, but in the effort to preserve your data without going all in, then choose deactivation.
Taking the ultimate plunge – hit the delete button
Regardless of your reasoning or feeling towards Facebook, you might just be interested in removing yourself from the social network entirely. No, you don’t want to have your data hidden just to bring it back. You just want it gone. Maybe you put out some content on Facebook that you might not be proud of or you just want to get rid of a site that you no longer constantly maintain. Then go ahead and delete your account. Facebook defines it as:
If you permanently delete your account, all personally identifiable information associated with your account will be purged from our database. This includes information like your name, email address, mailing address, and IM screen name. Copies of some material (photos, notes, etc.) may remain in our servers for technical reasons, but this material is disassociated from any personal identifiers and completely inaccessible to other users. Facebook also does not use content associated with accounts that have been deactivated or deleted.
What this should mean is that when you erase your Facebook profile, so goes whatever information you have stored in the Facebook database – including photos, videos, notes, wall comments, profile pics, mini Facebook games (no more Farmville on Facebook). What this will also affect is your ability to log into services that use the Facebook Connect platform as well. I’m pretty sure that you would also need to adjust your marketing strategy if you were using Facebook’s ad-serving platform as well.
So how does one go about to delete their Facebook account? Is it simpler said than done? Well I’m going to show you how to remove your entire presence from Facebook in a few specific steps:
Step 1: Understanding Facebook’s defense mechanism
Before you begin the time-intensive, but simple way of deleting your Facebook account, note that Facebook has some internal defense mechanisms – mainly that it will try and tire you out by searching for the delete account link before you actually get to delete the account. As a marketer, I get why they would do this, but simply finding that link in the help section of their site is just so stressful. So if you’re interested in searching for the link on the site, there are small twists and turns that you’ll need to do, but don’t be surprised that there’s a really obvious link on any page that will read “delete your account”. You will need to fight with the Facebook overlords just to make your case…or you can simply click on a few links here and be done with it.
Step 2: Cut through the red tape and click on this link
The secret that Facebook doesn’t want you to know is that the back door to deleting your Facebook account can be found by clicking on this link. It’s a really quick step. Just simply click on the “submit” button if you are ABSOLUTELY SURE that you want to delete your account. Once you do, you are given one final opportunity to back out. The next part, you’ll need to insert your password and also complete the security check (to prevent false deletions and to make sure there aren’t any accidents). After you do this, click on “okay” and you’re done.
Step 3: The 14-day waiting game
After you have successfully deleted your account, you will receive an email at the address associated with your now-former Facebook account telling you what you did and chances are that they’re sad to see you go. You will be told then that it will take 14 days – that’s two calendar weeks, for your data to be completely removed from their servers. So while you have your account “deleted”, it’s not deleted. So do NOT try and log back into your Facebook account if you truly want your account to be gone. If you do, you risk your deleted account not being deleted. This includes the following actions:
- To prevent any type of accidental logging into Facebook, it might be nice clear your browser cache and delete the cookies.
- Don’t click on any Facebook Share or Like buttons anymore, especially on sites that you visit frequently. It’s tempting to do, I know, but if you want to stop your addiction, then you’ll have to make sure you don’t click on them.
- Don’t log into any other service with Facebook Connect.
And there you have it…three simple steps for deleting your Facebook account. Good luck!
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