Whatever the reason, it’s obvious some no longer trust the social giant, and I keep hearing the same question over and over again from my readers:
“Is it possible to delete my Facebook account?”
and
“I managed to deactivate it, so it’s deleted right?”
You would think the answer would be fairly straightforward. But it took a lot of digging to come up with the solution surrounding account and profile deactivation — and full-blown account removal from the service. After doing the research and walking through the deceptive complex process, it is apparent that Facebook has done its very best to prevent its customers from leaving. Because if that happened it would, of course, limit the amount of customer data they can scrub from its service. Personally, I feel Facebook has crossed the line of unethical behavior on this. After all, Facebook doesn’t truly provide an interface to delete your account quickly and end your agreement with them regarding the use of your personal data per section 2.1 in its terms of service:
Facebook Terms of Service Agreement – Section 1 & 2 – Sharing Your Content and Information – (updated 11/10/2017)
There is plenty there to chew on, especially the areas I’ve highlighted. I’ll speak a bit about this later, let’s continue with account deletion and deactivation.
Deactivating Your Facebook Account: The same as Deleting your Account?
Users can deactivate their Facebook account from the user interface without too much trouble. Facebook will ask you to confirm your decision by displaying one of your friends and telling you “Your Friend will miss you.” I’m pretty sure it took, at least, a few days for “P-Diddy” to get over losing me as a FaceBook friend. :)
Once you confirm you want to deactivate your account, be sure to read the fine print. It clearly outlines that account deactivation is not the same as deleting your account/profile. By deactivating your Facebook account, you’re merely disabling your ID, however, all your data remains on Facebook servers.
What surprised me was the fact that even after the account deactivates, you can still be tagged in photos, invited to events, etc.. With this in mind, be sure to opt out of emails if that’s the path you’re going down.
So in short, deactivating your Facebook account is almost worthless. It’s Facebook’s deceptive and clever practice of luring you into a false sense of security by making you think you’ve removed your account, personal data, and license to your IP (intellectual property) from the service when you haven’t. The wrong part about this is even after your account deactivates, the license granted to Facebook in section 2.1 of its terms… Section 2.1 of the Facebook Terms of Service You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition: …is still in effect! And, being that pretty much anything you plug into Facebook is immediately shared with your friends, per the Facebook Terms of service (see highlight in bold,) the license you grant Facebook stays in effect indefinitely even if you do manage to delete your account permanently. Oh, and it gets better. To re-activate your account, all you need to do is sign in to Facebook or use your Facebook ID to sign in to another service (or post a comment on some sites) and everything is right back where you left it as if you never left – pictures, friends, posts, your IP… So I think everyone will agree with me in that the Facebook Account/Profile deactivation process is worthless if your goal is to delete your account and remove some of your data or IP from the service. Seriously the “real” good news is there IS a way to delete your account.
How to Really Delete Your Facebook Account
Deep in the bowels of the Facebook help center, you can find the URL that will permanently delete your Facebook account. Before I show you the link, however, please read the following carefully: Deleting your Facebook will delete all of your account information and remove your ability to log in to the service. No photos, friends, messages, status updates, etc. According to Facebook, once your account permanently deletes, there is no way to restore your account or your data. With that in mind, please move forward reading all large and fine print. So let’s get started on permanently deleting your profile. Visit http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account, click Submit
You’ll be asked to confirm. Type in your password and solve the Captcha. Click Okay to continue.
All done, sort of.
How to Make Sure Facebook Permanently Deletes your Account
Even after confirming the deletion of your account, Facebook will only deactivate it, leaving you 14 days to log back in and cancel the entire deletion.
I know what you’re thinking: “Really? Fourteen days to delete my data?” I think it’s pretty obvious by now Facebook doesn’t consider you a customer from a customer service point-of-view. Facebook is in the data business — more specifically, your data, and it will go to great lengths to keep information including your employment, school history, friends, network, photos, tagged face, etc… which it managed to collect from you over the years in its social web. The 14-day grace period is Facebook’s last-ditch attempt to lure you somehow back into the service either accidentally or from some subconscious Facebook addiction in order to abort the account cancellation process. With this in mind, here are a few tips to make sure you don’t “accidentally” log in to Facebook thus aborting your account nuke process. Now, I can’t make any promises that after all this work (and 14 days of course) Facebook will delete your account because it’s not my company. This is, however, the process that is laid out on its website (if you managed to track it down). Good luck; unfortunately, you’ll need it. Now if they want to play games to keep you on FB, they have built a wise trap for all of us, so we have to outsmart them to win. In changing your name, go to some worthless name or pick some criminal or nut case, like the Unabomber, Osama bin Laden, or Charlie Sheen. Won’t that screw with the twitters, too. Just change the spelling slightly…for example Charley Sheen, Charley Shean, Charley Shine and so forth. Once FB has enough of these useless names, they will stop the BS. And we thought AOL was bad…MUHAHAHAHAHA. One other caveat, make sure you can delete your email account after doing this name change and using the very large password. Hey what can I say, it worked for me. I cannot logon, and they cannot use my email address to find me and my name is useless. So FB, build it better and we will build it smarter. Need to test that out. Thnx for the tip. There’s also the option of converting your page into a fan or business page. This way, you can wipe your slate clean (remove all status updates, likes, pics, posts, comments, etc. and everything you’ve ever done on your and other pages) but without losing your friends (which will all turn into “Likes” or “Fans” of your fan/business page. You could even convert your page to a fan page to erase all your data then close your empty fan page once you’re done converting. If you plan on using your fan / business page, be sure to change your name to a name you’d want to use on your business / fan page BEFORE converting! … The dumbest part of all this is that now people can even REPLY to a message from a closed or converted page. Obviously, no one will ever get that reply. i did find this helpful and hopefully my accnt is gone in 2 weeks I did all of the above steps because I thought I “deleted” my Facebook account about 6 months ago. When I logged in it was like nothing happened. They REALLY want to track you and save your information. I can’t believe the lengths they go to so that it is almost impossible for a novice or intermediate internet user to “delete” their account. The internet is getting really, really scary. The biggest necessary evil in my life besides my divorce. From my experience yes. You should be able to re-use the username however depending on how long it takes Facebook to purge the system you might need to wait longer than 14 days for that. Keep us updated here what you experience as that’s a great question! -S your account will be deleted and you will never know the password Thanks again, S. Facebook can’t “sell” your data/content however they can “license” your content. I would assume this would include everything from access to your data (marketers) to photos (iStockphotos.com does pretty well licensing photos….). And since the terms also use the word – royalty-free, Facebook doesn’t have to pay you anything for that data/content. Hi Katie, If you delete your account (and wait the 14 days) you will have no problem re-creating a NEW account with your old email address. If someone else maliciously deleted your account, or you change your mind, you can recover. Also, do you think that they don’t have redundancy on their systems to avoid data loss? There are valid reasons to build a system such that bulk deletes happen on a staggered basis and not on demand. Hiding the true DELETE link is the inexcusable part. In regards to data redundancy I’m not sure I follow you. I have no issue with Facebook building redundant systems and taking backups not to lose data. That’s the norm for any data center so I’m not sure I follow that part of your comment. The whole thing is stupid. I was wondering if the “file” that facebook allows you to upload with all of your photos/history and that they email to you would be deleted if i deleted my facebook? Good thought tho. I do agree with you tho regarding bulk deletes of accounts. With 300+ million accounts, depending on how many accounts are deleted (I’m going to guess not many since it’s so hard to find the delete link) that’s probably something you want to batch delete. http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf – Section 2.2“When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others). “ good read groovydude and good comments. Thanks for the comments and welcome to groovyPost! Thanks It would be a good test actually. Keep us looped in if you give it a try! After reading you comment, I thought why not test if I could register with same email and other information again. I tried and it allowed me to create a new profile which contained same information as previous one. The conclusion is, they allow you to register using same email and information. P.S. – I deleted my account again :) Now that being said, I can also understand the 14 day waiting period. Imagine if someone figured out your password and then logged in and deleted your account… If you had hundreds of photos, friends, blog posts, business pages etc…. this could be a VERY bad thing. The 14 days is probably a reasonable period to allow a person to return from vacation, realize they have been hacked, login again and change their password. That being said, I would prefer they use a “secret” word or email confirmation to delete the account instead of the 14 day wait period. Then again, I’m sure another 50 ppl would disagree with me :) So, if something fails on one browser, try another ;) Anyway, thanks for sharing this invaluable information! Step 1 – Login to Facebook and verify they are fully logged in and everything works. Step 2 – Click the DELETE Link: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account Step 3 – Report back here if it worked! ;) Step 4 – If it fails, try a different browser. Could be your cookies are not enabled properly or??? Just add the phrase: account deleted on the info. Make the privacy settings as strict as possible. Once you have done all this… who cares if facebook still have an account that belonged to you. I went back 2 months later and the account was still there after “deleting”. Well beyond the 14 day statement. http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes#author-bio Moved from ‘De-activation’ to ‘Delete’. Welcome to groovyPost! 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com To you’re host file for PC Most systems, you can find the host file at: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts And, don’t put http:// into a host file. just domain names and sub-domains. Just login, change your name, age country and anything to a load of rubbish and do much more then remove your data, CORRUPT THEIR DATA ON YOU. Then input an email address that doesnt work and update the account. et voila. A BS version of you. I’m a true patriot. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a goddamn thing to do with Facebook, and neither will I any more. Thanks for stopping by! They don’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re evil or even dangerous and it doesn’t mean that everything they do ignores your wishes. They are a product. The way they work is multifaceted. The grace period is pretty common place and, I think, pretty fine. This is standard on most blog hosting websites and pretty much any social networking site. This is not a sign that facebook is working behind the scenes to sell all your information to the internet mafia. Stop jumping at any opportunity to be afraid of big things. How about before you start freaking out at the power someone or something has you find out how much damage they’ve caused so far. Looking at facebook I’d say their track record is pretty clean. This is the kind of information I would take into account when deciding what to be afraid of. Are they actively harmful vs. are they potentially harmful. I find it works well. But thank you for finding out how to delete accounts and providing a good analysis of the difference between “deactivating” and “deleting.” That information was very useful. Your opinion on any of it being bad I completely disagree with. Same thing with commenting on a Blog using FaceBook Connect (OAuth). I’ve encountered places where an expiry window was stated but loosely enforced… we had a “gone after 30 days” policy which was accomplished by a monthly SQL script that looked for items >30 days…. thus you might be in there actually 61 days! Let us know if that works. I’ve heard about the email address working but no one has came back and officially confirmed it yet. 3.Avoid clicking the Facebook Share button on any websites you read such as the button below (sorry, couldn’t resist ) LOL – Just awesome! All you do is go to the help centre and search for “delete account.” To test it out you could get yourself banned, wait a month then try to create another account with the same email address. ? Before I completely read through your article I passed on your page link to friend and family along with why I am sharing this with them. I started us FB with the intentions of most other FB users – to connect with friends and family. But after a little time of seeing posts from friends of friends who I didn’t know, receiving un-solicited emails, and finding I couldn’t find any way to control ‘My Account’, I got fed up and quit using it. Then I noticed more and more articles about Fb’s security problems and bugs (accidental or purposeful), I decided it was time to completely get rid of it, but could not find a way to do it. I am usually against ‘Big Brother’ intervening or controlling business, but they still need to lay out some firm guidelines as to what is proper, ethical practices and information dissemination. Personally, my FB experience has detered me from ever using any social networking site of the type. Largely due in part to the fact that most of the user content is just mindless. I don’t want to know that you had prime rib for dinner at some chic restaurant, or that you just earned a ‘gold star’ with some silly game-like app. Good riddance FB. Again, Thanks for bringing this Valuable information to light. Keep up the good work. chosenson I think it’s a good alternative. Look me up if you try it out – http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/groovypost/ btw – I had prime rib last night and it was undercooked…. :) Also, One could do any of several things that are prohibited by FB, that would get your account shut down ;) One more week and mine Should be gone for good. Although, I am still very curious about their data retention. With everything Facebook has been doing, I worry that deleting the account may not guarantee Facebook deleting all data associated with me/my account. We’ll see. Good Luck. any idea if using Pandora might re-trigger the account in the 14-day period? also this link says something about Facebook getting rid of the “suicide” option, has anyone had success deleting in the last couple days/weeks? http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-rogue Or…. I think you can also go into Facebook and kill the access for Pandora. I’ll have to play with this. I use Facebook ONLY for the FAN PAGE so I haven’t played around much in the settings. Anyone else out there able to answer Richards question? Perhaps I’m answering my own questions here, but I’d still like to hear how you are using the site post personal account deletion (and how that’s working out for you/whether you think the response/traffic/interest generated via your fb page is worth it to your site/business). Are you interacting with those that “like” the page via comment discussion or simply feeding links to it automatically to draw traffic to your own website? (I’m considering some of these options myself, hence the 20Q interest.) Thanks! So yea, I have a facebook page at http://facebook.com/groovypost. The traffic I get from facebook is about 3% of my total traffic per month. What I do is each time I make a post on groovypost.com, I post a link to the article onto my groovyPost page on facebook as well. They have apps which can do this for you automatically however I like to have more control over how the link is posted to the page. Now in regards to my personal privacy, my account at facebook is 100% anonymous. You can find me there at http://facebook.com/mrgroove.org. The only reason I have an account on facebook is to drive traffic to my site groovyPost.com and to administer my page groovyPost. Being that they have 350+ million users, I think it would be silly for me to ignore this userbase. So, with that in mind, i guess that’s why I write articles like this one. Use Facebook if you want but just be educated about how the business is using your data. If enough people are educated however and demand that their user data not be shared, sold, etc… then you need to be prepared to start paying for the service. I guess that’s the trade-off… Nothing is free and Facebook is in the business to make money. If they don’t get your data for free they will need to make money another way. Personally I hope they go the Apple App Store route. Sell games and apps to their 350+ million users. Facebook takes a 50% cut so now they can get out of the User Data Auction business. ;) If it’s in an ‘obligatory’ field, then who says that you have to give true information? Birthday: 01/01/1900 for instance, name: John Doe, location: North Korea – who cares? There is no legal comeback after all. And you can use a hotmail or gmail email address as well. Then just add the few people who you actually want to know about, or want to make contact with you, and resist any other friend request. And only put up stuff you don’t mind leaking out to people you don’t know. Yes, FB is intrusive and attempts to be controlling, but we’re smarter than them, aren’t we? P.S. I tried to post a link to this page on facebook. It got deleted. :) Thanks! Stefan Hi Stefan, thanks for the mention in your blog post even if it is in HK. I’m glad you enjoyed reading my article. Hope to see you around more in the comments here on groovyPost.com! -Mrgroove And what if your family, friends, employer,… found out about it? I think you will be better off deleting your account. Now you could be locked out of facebook unable to delete your personal data or your account…. Like I said, you would need to read the Facebook Terms of Service to be sure however I’m going to bet they don’t address that scenario / loop-hole. Looks like some rogue spyware is running around Facebook. Read the story then ask yourself why Facebook is so useful. You won’t find a contact for Facebook. That would subject them to way too much email/phone traffic from many upset users. Judging from what you say, I wonder if someone has your account credentials. If you find the account has not been deleted after the obligatory two weeks wait, follow the recommendations of other posters here at Groovypost; delete as much info as possible, change the login/password, then follow the account deletion steps. Good Luck! I enjoyed your comparison of Facebook and the Roman empire. This holds true; history repeats itself. I have used the same analogy in reference to Facebook over at PC World – http://www.pcworld.com/article/196700/how_to_stop_worrying_about_privacy_and_love_facebook.html I keep seeing many forum posts from people not knowing how to delete their facebook account; only deactivating. And many of them are complaining about deactivating/deleting the account only to find they are reactivated in a short time. Probably has to do with using facebook credentials to log into other connected sites. Anyways, whenever I see such posts, I respond with the address to this page on groovyPost along with advice about what to do to avoid the re-activations. Being a regular PC World reader, I have posted a link to this page many times. So I ask, if you see a post or hear a friend/person talking about the problem of deleting their facebook account, provide them with the address to this page; or at least help them with deleting their account. If we all help others, maybe we can force facebook to go away, or change thier ways. (Firing Zuckerburg would be a great start!) Thanks. I think for me where things go sideways is when Facebook started changing the privacy / terms of service so they could begin to monetize the site using both their customers data (you and me) rather than just monetizing their customer traffic. Now… Do I blame them? Not really. Facebook probably never expected the level of growth they experienced. That includes both TRAFFIC and DATA STORAGE. Imagine how much drive space is needed for Facebook to store ALL THOSE PHOTOS! Most likely, Ad Revenue like Google Adsense or other Click Revenue was not going to be enough so they probably figured out they needed to start digging deep into other ways to make revenue JUST TO KEEP THE SITE RUNNING….. So…. Yeah, if people don’t like being exploited then don’t use a FREE service with a really bad Terms of Service. Shop around and find one that meets both your Privacy and Social requirements. I think this will make for a really good article! I’ll have to write something up on a GOOD facebook alternative! Never did I give any data other than my email address, and just having that bit of data in the Facebook database became problematic over the last several months. I essentially gave the bad guys a line in to my inbox. Thanks to Mr. Groove for the easy to follow steps to delete this security nightmare from my daily workflow. dlm Contrite Facebook CEO promises new privacy controls: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/20100524/tc_ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2204 However, another issue I have is that some of my friends post photos of me. I wish there was a way to stop that, but I suppose there isn’t. And they never really listen when you request to have it removed! BTW – Welcome to groovypost! Let me know how it goes! – katy lusk I’m curious, did you follow the process and nuke them all? Make sense? Or, perhaps create a new email address using GMAIL or hotmail then try to friend your old email address?? Just a few thoughts. Like I said, not a lot of options as I believe your FB account PW reset process uses email to reset the account. You should try it anyway as it might have changed since the last time I tried it. It might use other info now like Birth date and other things. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/08/04/facebook-founder-facing-personal-vendetta-privacy/ The two-week timing was not from your blog, it was from the email Facebook sent me: ——- Hi Richard, We have received a request to permanently delete your account. Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. ——– That email was dated Friday, July 23, 2010. Oooooh, I wanna throttle someone! They lied to me! The account was NOT deleted, and they’re still trying to get me to undo the deletion! I am so mad I could chew nails and spit out tacks! Doesn’t the FTC have some sort of jurisdiction here? You could try to email privacy@facebook.com and ask them to delete you account. Some are saying that it actually works however I have yet to confirm that. I found some instructions for accessing your account if your email is no longer valid. I received an email from “The Facebook Team” asking me to reply to them and indicate that I am the user of this account etc. I did so hoping they would grant me access so I could once again go in and delete it properly. However, 12 days have gone by and I haven’t heard a word. They made a point in their email to state that, “Finally, note that writing in multiple times will not result in a faster response. Once you submit your initial request, it is placed in a queue and responded to accordingly.” Is it just me, or does this imply a bit of a wait? When do I try again if I don’t hear from them? Who do I contact? It has been over three years since I have even looked at my account. I would really like to be done with this. In regards to the time it takes for them to get back to you…. I don’t think that is all that bad actually. Don’t forget they have ??? 500 million users now??? Just imagine how many people a day ask them for help to delete, change, update their account etc… With that many customers it is actually amazing that they will have a human respond to you in the first place. So give it some time or send an email to the privacy@facebook.com address and cross your fingers! Thanks in advance One thing you can try is sending an email to privacy@facebook.com. Apparently you can send them an email asking them to delete your account and they ill get back to you in a few days. Then again, I heard from a few people that although this worked for them, for others they just send you to the link to deactivate your account again…. So hopefully it will work for you. Sorry AND welcome to the blog :BTW ;) Regards, Harry ;) MrGroove wrote, “Not that Facebook is evil, they just don’t want to lose customers.” I understand your point, MrGroove, which I think amounts to, “It’s just business; it isn’t personal.” Well, in the world I inhabit, lying in any form is evil, and such things as misdirection and obfuscation of intent are the same as lying. Facebook have demonstrated time and again that they care nothing for their members’ privacy, and may have violated privacy laws (e.g., Canada). The very fact that a subscriber must go to such enormous trouble to delete his account that a forum such as this is needed to help him do it, strongly suggests that Facebook’s practices with regard to their members are suspect. Good grief! With a public addiction to the service that has garnered half a billion members, one would think that Facebook wouldn’t need to inhibit the occasional rebel from seceding. One would think that they would modify their practices so as to appear more accomodating, at least publically, by offering more flexible and responsive options to those who want to rethink their involvement. No, MrGroove, Facebook ARE evil, because they lie and care nothing for their subscribers, except what those subscribers give them — personal, detailed information which they can then sell for money. Disclaimer: This opinion is personal, and may or may not reflect the views and opinions expressed by the owners or operators of GroovyPost. It is my personal opinion only, and is not shared by anyone else connected with this forum, unless they say so. So there! Great write-up mr reed. When I try to log in, it tells me the email address doesn’t exist. Even though it did the night before. I don’t expose anyone else has experienced this? Also, is there no way of actually speaking to someone from facebook? Or is it all automated these days? Yeah, that’s one problem online providers like Google, Twitter and FACEBOOK won’t be fixing anytime soon. Say hello to the Self-Help-Forums moderated by out of country support teams. I have a second account, using a fake name, address, photo, etc. That account is used to admin pages and groups, and to participate in other pages and groups. This account was ‘disabled’ last week. My wall, info, all my posts on pages that I didn’t admin, all the pages I do admin, everything disappeared completely from view. Logging on with the first account, I found that everything I had created in the second account was gone. There were gaps on pages where I remembered posting. Peoples’ responses to me on those pages still existed, but my posts didn’t. All the groups I admin were unaccessible and did not appear when I typed their names into the search box. I wrote to disabled@facebook.com asking why I had been disabled, and requested to be un-disabled. They actually responded and re-enabled the account, within 2 days. Everything came back – my pages and groups, previous posts in other groups, and all the other info. Then today, they disabled me again. I don’t know why. They don’t tell you why. The why isn’t even important – all that matters is that facebook has shown itself to be unreliable. So I started looking into how to just shut everything down permanently and never use facebook again. I don’t want to quit and then find out facebook is using all the creative work I put into those pages. And continuing to use my photos, and keeping my email on file. I insist upon destroying everything rather than letting facebook have them. There must be a way to do this. I’d like to know, what is the difference between getting disabled and deletion? Because when you get disabled, you become invisible, but facebook keeps everything you’ve put there, and can make it reappear whenever they want. Would they do the same thing with a full deletion? Does deletion just make you invisible? I have a much better understanding of what facebook is about than I did when I first signed up, and would like to remove permanently nearly everything I have ever posted in my personal account. I would delete both the personal and the fake account if it would completely erase everything – otherwise, what’s the point. I want the dictionary definition of ‘erase’, not the facebook version of ‘erase’. Your blog post is very informative. Now to your question…. When you actually look at the TERMS OF SERVICE and read the fine print there is actually little difference between the Deactivation and the Delete process and this is why. The Delete Account process will actually tell Facebook to go and delete all your posts, photos etc… There is an exception however as stated in the Terms of Service: You see, the terms say that your IP license ends when you delete the IP content or when your account is deleted UNLESS you have shared your content with other people and they have not deleted it…. So, it’s hard to say “exactly” what this means. Perhaps they are talking about messages you post on other peoples WALLS or perhaps they are talking about photos you have shared with other people. It’s hard to say. My suggestion would be to try to get logged back in, delete everything possible on your account, un-friend all your friends, delete all your apps, then start the account deletion process. Good luck! Make sense? It states in their ToS that their royalty-free license of your IP ends if you delete it, so that is the only way… Heck you might as well changes your personal information too, make your name John Doe, birthdate 1/1/1950, bio, status… CHANGE IT ALL! Then delete your account. The email address is: invite+kr4mn4sxg4bn@facebookmail.com with a reply addy of: noreply@facebookmail.com The email contents (I can’t show the facebook graphics): Hi, Paper Memories Plus is inviting you to join Facebook. Once you join, you’ll be able to connect with the Paper Memories Plus Page, along with people you care about and other things that interest you. Thanks, Paper Memories Plus This is the first time I have received an email from facebook or facebook related, but apparently they do not remove the information they collected and still make use of it. I may be wrong, but it appears that facebook will never get rid of a persons info.vMust be far too valuable. I had to read two to three articles before I found a link to permanently delete my account and this is the one of those articles i consulted. Even if I want to communicate with my best friend its not worth having this account to do so he has all my contact info already. Using the instructions provided above, I successfully deleted my FaceBook account. The information provided in this forum is sufficient to accomplish that task. Thanks to groovyPost and its FaceBook gurus for helping me do this! As the experts in this matter have said, there are pitfalls that can cause your deletion process to fail, and I would like to offer a couple of things that might help prevent that failure. First, for Firefox users, there is an add-on for your browser that can prevent any connection to FaceBook, or any other service that you want to block. It is called “Ghostery,” and it blocks tracking cookies and other stuff that invades your privacy. Find it at http://www.ghostery.com/. Check it out and see whether it might possibly help you. Second, you might want to consider installing an IP blocker. IPs are the Internet numbers that belong to the web sites you connect to. Think of them as phone numbers for the Internet. When you type, “stuff.com” into your browser, a DNS server somewhere translates that request into a number, for example, “192.168.0.0,” to take your browser to that site. Some sites are malicious, and will harm your computer. So it would be really good if you had a program for your computer that would simply block the numbers that are known to be bad, right? Well, there’s an app for that! (And you don’t have to have an iPhone to use it.) The basic program that permits this IP-number-blocking can be found here: http://www.peerblock.com/ But wait, there’s more! Go to http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php to find the blocklists that make this software work at its best. While you’re there, look around and discover everthing there is to know about personal Internet security. And how does this relate to deleting your FaceBook account? Well, you want to make sure, after you’ve found the “delete” key, that simply visiting a web site doesn’t, without your knowledge, re-activate the account. The best way to do that is to block any and all attempts by FaceBook to access your computer. And the best way to do that is to block all their Internet “phone numbers.” Give it some thought. The Netweasel Keep us updated on your progress! does this mean that i can login today no worries and it is deleted? or does this mean that today I can still login and undelete it? If not, you could try to email privacy@facebook.com and see if they will help you. My guess is your out of luck. facebook does NOT want you to delete your account because they will lose all your juicy personal data and connections. So they will probalby stand behind a policy of “You need to make the request using the email associated with your account”. Either-way, please post back here and let us know what happens. I’m curious if they will let you delete it by knowing just personal info on the account. Does this mean I cannot delete that account? So I take it you don’t remember the password to login to it with? If you don’t know the password for the Facebook account and you can’t remember the Email address you set it up with then your kinda out of luck. You might try to reset the password by going through that process then check all your email addresses. You might get lucky. The key is to follow the instructions provided here precisely, and resist the temptation to check on your account or click any Facebook link during the two-week “marked for deletion” period. Don’t click on any “Like This” links or anything else that might lead back to Facebook, or you risk having your account reactivated without your permission, and without any notification. I have been computing since the mid-Eighties and on the Internet since the Nineties, and I have never seen a “legitimate” Internet business with such arrogant disregard for users’ rights and privacy. After they hit the half-billion-users mark, they suddenly changed the privacy policy so that all their users private information would then become public, with special steps required on the part of members if they wanted any of their formerly private information to remain private! Honestly, I sense megalomania at the heart of Facebook’s administration. Just check out the details of how Facebook came to be, and you’ll see what I mean. The farther I can get away from Facebook, the better! Just my opinion. Sorry if this is not the right venue for it. Just follow the instructions and use the help provided here, and you, too, can be free of this member-groping voyeur service. Thanks for the feedback. Glad the article helped you. Also, thanks for the great comment. Thanks for the comments and welcome to my blog! Well, I honestly did nothing more than point out their published policies and business practices. Like I’ve said many times, it’s all about being an informed consumer. If you want all your “junk” hanging out for everyone to see, use, sell, exploit, super. If not, fine. ;) Thanks guys Or it could just be a clever marketing ploy, the search results create a phantom account for you and all you have to do is sign up. Pretty shifty…. But this was before i found your tutorial lol. Anyway I think it’s gonna be pretty hard to keep everyone in the band not to do anything that implicates facebook’s auto log in functions, since we’re in so many different networks. I’m thinking about changing the pw and make everyone with access clean their cookies before I delete it. I’ll make sure to tell you how it all went :) and thank you again! If you take a look at Section 2.1 – 2.5, it will answer your question. Depending how you “translate” it, as long as you never shared any of your photos, or wrote on anyone’s wall etc… once you delete your account, all that data will be deleted. I personally think that is pretty rare however. That being said, we really need someone from facebook to help us define the use cases or scenerios it is referring to in order to properly translate exactly what they are saying in Sections 2.1 – 2.5. Here is the text specifically I’m talking about: There is a Firefox add-on that blocks connections between your computer and Facebook while you browse the Internet. Here is what it says about itself (I hope I don’t get in trouble for quoting this from the Mozilla web site!): “This add-on intercepts connections going to Facebook servers (currently facebook.com and fbcdn.net and all subdomains) and blocks them (by returning Host Not Found, so it’s as if those servers disappeared from DNS). The purpose of this is to prevent Facebook’s servers from being pinged at all as you surf the Web, thereby allowing them to track your browsing (via Referrer headers). It is intended to complement tracker-blockers like Ghostery, which are great but don’t block all of Facebook’s tools. If you have this add-on installed, Facebook will completely disappear from your browsing experience, except for seeing some ‘The server could not be found’ messages in iframes.” Obviously, if you’re worried about inadvertently re-activating your Facebook account just by browsing the web, this Firefox add-on should put your mind at ease. I have both NoFace and Ghostery installed in Firefox and they work just fine. Incidentally, those of you with slow Internet connections will probably see improvement in your browsing experience since advertisers/trackers/spy cookies and Facebook won’t be able to “phone home,” hijacking your precious bandwidth. Here are the links: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noface/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/ If you’re still using Internet Explorer, please consider giving Firefox a try. I find it much easier to use. One word of caution, though: Be careful about Firefox add-ons that you don’t get directly from the Mozilla web site. Some dodgy sites (adult sites, for example) will try to feed you an add-on that is infected with a virus by telling you, near the top of your browser, that “an add-on is needed to view content on this site” or some such. Use common sense when this happens! Consider what sort of site you’re visiting before accepting software from it. I hope this helps someone. and why do YOU want my email address to post this? Personally, I can’t stand FB…but I get pictures of my kids and Grandson via FB so that is the only reason I have it and since the rules won’t allow me to have a biz and personal, I’m kinda stuck… Thanks What about just deleting Pages? When I click on the edit button below the profile photo, I am allowed to Deactivate the Page but then I am told I am not allowed to delete…what’s up with that? Personally, I can’t stand FB…but I get pictures of my kids and Grandson via FB so that is the only reason I have it and since the rules won’t allow me to have a biz and personal, I’m kinda stuck… Thanks Now to answer your question – Once you’ve initiated the account delete and your waiting the 14 days for your account to be deleted, as long as YOU don’t use your facebook account in anyway, your OK. Friends can send you messages and all sorts of stuff however it will not impact your permanent facebook account delete. One personal suggestion however…. before you actually deactivate and delete your account, I would first delete all your content in facebook or even change it so that it’s all false information. Delete all photos, messages etc… Then un-friend everyone THEN delete your account. Hope that helps! Well, you really are not in a good place. Getting hacked online has to be one of the most stressful things that can happen to a person. Hopefully you didn’t keep much personal information or receive much personal information into your gmail account. Did you GMAIL account have any emails from other accounts like banking or otherwise? Hopefully you are able to get access back into your gmail account and your facebook account asap before more damage is done. You might try to contact privacy@facebook.com and try to get access to your account that way. If you want more tips or questions about security, try to post your question in my security section of the forum here: https://www.groovypost.com/forum/ And yeah…. WikiPedia, I’ve honestly never thought about that one…. I’ll have to give that one some thought in regards to it’s impact to your long-term privacy on and offline… Thanks! My guess (since I’ve not tried it) is obviously, no mail will vanish from GMAIL and the email in their Facebook inbox will not be deleted either. Does anyone know anything about this, and how I can remove the old email accounts from my FB account? Thank you. Can’t you just login and blow away the old email address? How do I see what email accounts are linked to mt FB account and can I delete them? Facebook forces their mobil view upon at least iPhone users. It is amatter of respect a cookie which can store a choise to use the ordinary full site view. Since iPhone is very capable iin presenting full size web pages it is the better option imo. But Facebook forces you back to the mobile view after clickin the main links up on the left side. Yes I have been bug reporting about this a couple of time but with no result. Will post the other half later. If your account was deleted, the emails should stop. Obviously thats not the case which is really interesting…. What I would do is send an email to privacy@facebook.com and complain. Second thing I would do is setup a filter rule on your email and send emails from @facebook.com to the trash. That being said, if you did use your facebook account to login to Flickr, the 14 day timer to delete your account has been deactivated so you will need to go through the steps I listed above again to delete your account. Hold off on that however until I can figure out if you can flip your flickr account to username/pw first however. I’ll be in touch here. ;)
(For example, if you post something to another user’s profile and then you delete your account, that post may remain, but be attributed to an “Anonymous Facebook User.”) Does this mean that if I delete my account, then my wall posts, comments etc on OTHER people’s profiles will remain but be attributed to “Anonymous Facebook User” for definite? I was planning on removing my account, but I have posted quite a bit on friends’ walls, and I was under the impression that removing my account would also remove the content I have posted/shared on other people’s walls… I recognise people will just say “delete all the wall posts then” but it is a lot of wall posts to go through. Thanks! I have a super old fb account I need to delete. However I no longer have access to the original email address because it expired. I was still able to log into facebook with the expired email and my password and I completed the deltetion request. My question is will the account still delete even though I will not receive the confirming email? I completed the process around 3 days ago so I am still “waiting it out” for the 14 days to pass. Thanks in advance for your help! One more quick question for you- Does the 14 day delete period start the same day you submit the delete request or does it begin the next day? I just want to ensure I wait long enough before checking to make sure the account is gone. Thanks again for the wonderful website and awesome articles! Just to be safe, just wait 15 or 16 days and you can test it with a login (I would guess). Hope that helps and THANKS FOR THE FEEDBACK! Be sure to subscribe to our Daily newsletter for a daily dose of groovy tips! ;) I’m glad the article was valuable to you! -Steve I just wanted to share my experience of supposedly deleting my facebook data and pages. I have not succeeded! I followed a procedure identical to that you describe. I waited months and thought it was gone. But then I searched for images of myself on google and found a small icon of my “former” facebook photo. The link on google took me to a website yasni dot com. I searched for my name on that site – scrolled down and clicked on the section “network profiles” – this took me to a series of pages – on one of the pages I found I was listed with a link to my former facebook page with an icon of a photo of my face on the list! When I click on the facebook link it takes me to my former facebook page which says: “This content is currently unavailable The page you requested cannot be displayed at the moment. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.” The URL of the page is of this format: http://www.facebook.com/people/Myname/someNumbers Just to be clear I didn’t deactivate my account – I most definitely “deleted” it. From the original google image page I found a direct link to the icon of me which is on the website http://profile.ak.facebook.com the path includes numerous hard-to-guess and non-searchable subdirectories with the last part with the “someNumbers” matching that from my “deleted” account and ending in _121.jpg. This shows that they are still making public an icon of a photo of my face from facebook.com! So much for deleting my data! I’d be happy to show Mr Groove the details so he can confirm them. The upshot is that facebook has NOT deleted all my data – maybe they didn’t remove anything – but just hid it? However an icon of a photo of my face IS available. Maybe to lure friends to join facebook? I don’t think facebook is deleting accounts! i am sure that FB keeps all your . dont trust them, sell all ur information to companies and ur pcitures Seriously Never Again will I be dumb enough to get a profile with facebook again. Google+ have clear instructions on how to delete profiles without the runaround. Since you don’t have access to your facebook account do you have access to your email address you used to setup the account? You should try to reset the PW using your email address and if that doesn’t work – start the process of trying to recover the account at privacy@facebook.com I followed your steps (without unfriending or deleting photos and videos)2 days ago however, right before I started the deletion I sent a private message containing a couple of videos that I wanted to “save” to a friend on fb because they were sent from a phone I no longer own. I did download my info before I deleted (but was afraid that it didn’t save my info) If she still has them in her messages, does that mean my account will still be active after 14days? And if she deletes them now (during the deletion pending phase)will that somehow trigger my account to become active again? OR does this just mean they can use the videos if they choose to? They are just short clips of my child that I didn’t want to lose… ~Thanks for the help, wish I’d have read all the posts to ensure that my albums were removed and friends were deleted etc…I guess now I wait!! So your good. Nothing to worry about. Just make sure you don’t use your facebook account for 14 days including logging into a site or commenting on a site using your old facebook login. If you are a Dj or something and no longer care to keep your page open (or just want to erase your history of posts, comments, likes…etc. and start fresh without losing your friends…etc.), you could just convert your profile into a fan page. All your friends will be converted to likes/fans, and everything else will be wiped clean. Not only that, but a fan page has unlimited friends/fans acceptance (unlike a regular profile that has a 5,000 friend limit), and you can use ANY name you want without having your account suspended and having to send in a clear copy of a government photo ID with your real name on it so they could reinstate your account with your real name filled in! Only downside is once you convert to a fan page, you cannot convert back, and a fan/like/business page doesn’t operate the same way a regular profile does… but if you enjoy others being able to see your posts and you not being able to see theirs, then a fan page would be right up your alley! On a fan/like page, you can only communicate directly with other like or fan pages. You will not be able to see the walls or status updates from anyone who has a regular page, and you can only reply to your fans – IF they comment on your status! Everything I’ve typed so far is based on personal experience and has happened with me. This should help. I followed your instructions to delete my FB account and I am waiting for it to be permanently deleted after 14 days. I want to know if the content that will be deleted includes also the messages and chat conversations we sent to other FB users. Otherwise, will they still be able to read what we sent them even if we delete permanently our accounts? Please advise. Thank you all. Hope this helps. Then they’ll delete it and stop trying to lure you back :) Sorry :) If you have a position available that I could do from home I would consider it. Thanks, TheDaddyBird Patrick Has anyone discovered how to actually totally, get rid of a facebook account? any help welcome, cheers all I don’t know why clicking on it doesn’t work, & cal me a cynic, but my first thought is that facebook have caused that. Maybe not…. Anyway, here’s a way round that issue. Now to just be strong & resist the temptation of logging in :-) Welcome to my blog! -Steve I deleted it I doubt my 2 total friends will miss me – I don’t want to be counted as using facebook to up their revenues in any manner, which is why they make is so hard to get out. hehehe — Thanks for the comment and welcome to my blog groovyPost! Account Scheduled for Deletion Hi Otto, We have received a request to permanently delete your account. Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you did not request to permanently delete your account, please login to Facebook to cancel this request: First thing I would do is CHANGE your password. Don’t use a password however — Use a phassphrase. Here’s an article I wrote about that: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/create-easy-remember-secure-strong-password-phrase/ Ok, now that you have a good password — go into facebook and delete ALL the information in there. Delete as much as you can including all your friends, photos, messages, etc…. THis is not a requirement however it’s a safeguard. Last step is to delete your accounting using the steps I wrote about in this article. From there you should be good. Just don’t open any emails from Facebook or login to any accounts which use your facebook account. Doing this will abort the perm. delete process and your account will remain deactivated (not deleted). http://www.overclock.net/t/44143/how-to-use-the-hosts-file-to-block-websites-in-windows To open your hosts file. At the very bottom, add the following: 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 http://www.facebook.com This will effectively render your PC incapable of accessing facebook. This is also pretty damned helpful if you WANT to quit FB, but have a “mild” addiction to it. Be sure to read everything at the page I linked to, and if you don’t understand it, don’t mess with the hosts file. One thing to keep in mind is once you start editing your hosts file, you will never again be able to visit those sites. Very handy as long as you don’t forget you edited the file a few weeks later. thanks for all the information. really helped out. one question though..can i permanently delete this account and come back after 3 weeks and open a business account using the same e-mail address? No – If you delete your account, anything you shared with someone else will still remain. That’s in the Terms of Service at Facebook as well. It will only be delete if you didn’t share it with anyone (or at least they are not bound to delete it once you share it anyway). i created a facebook account few days back using this e mail as my primary id. Now my husband has created one fb account using the same email id. while registering it, it didnot tell anything about the mail id existence and my hubby’s account is created. Now i am unable to access my accout using my password, as id is same for both me n my hubby. So i would like to know if my account is disabled/deactivted/deleted. Pls tell me wat to do now. In general if ya can’t get rid of it at least make all the data garbage…GIGO!!!! hahahahaha Seriously thanks for the FB instructions! Thats the first reason, second one is i dont like the idea that facebook is taking advantage of my personal info. Steve Krause, i would like to thank u very much for providing me the link to the delete page and showing me what to do, if u didnt do that i would have just deactivated my account (which would be absolutely meaningless). my only regret is that in my impatience i only deleted the messages, does everything else (my pics, info, and statuses) disappear after 14 days? I sent a message to my friend, but she didn’t open her account lately and didn’t read my message, I want to “delete” my facebook account permanently, will the sent message be deleted from my friend’s inbox or not? Once it left your inbox it because the property of the person you sent it to — well, technically speaking Facebook owns it but you get my point. -S Is it true that msgs/comments from others’ inboxes/walls will still exist? Photos I can understand, but I distinctly remember even when you deactivate, msgs/comments will no longer exist? Or maybe that was too long ago.I permanently deleted mine in Oct 2010. Life is good without Facebook people! My advice is to first delete all your friends and photos and messages. Clean up the account so it’s super clean. At that point, go through the delete process and you should be fine. My friends seem to treat it as if I am dying – as if they can’t email me, call me, or god FORBID send me a typed letter using vintage paper ripped out of those ancient books that half-price bookstores can’t sell and put outside in the “free box.” A lot of those older hardcover books have blank pages at the end or beginning and make wicked cool stationary. Yep. Definitely not acid free. Think steam punk invitations, romantic letters, special announcements, or just the thrill of giving someone cardiac arrest because they received an actual “letter” in the mail. I use an old Underwood manual typewriter. Laser printing on vintage paper is insulting both to the paper and the printer. I digress. Somehow, I don’t think this type of “Social Networking” – at the cost of perpetual data mining and privacy invasion for profit – is what was so gloriously envisioned as the “future norm” by all those heads at High Frontiers/Reality Hackers/ Mondo 2000. They would have been horrified at the idea of everyone voluntarily handing over such intel. It’s as if…. as if we have become ~conditioned.~ I haven’t felt this good since I informed OnStar what they could do with their redundant phone technology and tracking service, and potentially eavesdropping “service.” For a while there, they were still tracking ex-customers, but claimed they stopped the practice. While it’s difficult to imagine Facebook disappearing, I can easily picture OnStar failing relatively soon. Trying to scare soccer moms that they are going to get stranded out in the desert, unable to use their own phone can only go so far. Outstanding article, Steve! It remains timely as ever. Bottom line: Falsify and lie your butt off on as much info as possible, and follow the steps listed on the blog. Worked for me!!! I am studying Creative Multimedia at college here in Ireland. A few weeks back, this came up in one of my modules, Social Context of Technology and we discussed Facebook. You’re data is never EVER going to be deleted when you ‘delete’ your account. They give your information to companys and to the government. Anything and EVERYTHING you post online, status’, photos, videos and links, they will claim as property of Facebook which is quite terrifying. For talk sake, If someone wanted to go back to the States again, they may be rejected…why? Because the government have been given data without your knowledge. The internet world and the ‘real world’ is under security by the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. It isn’t safe anymore. This world was so much different over 20 years ago when the internet only started… What you think? – Barry In a way, I treat Facebook and other online services like a dangerous pet or a gun. Stay educated and informed and never let your guard down. When you get careless and make assumptions, you will get hurt. The internet is one great big database. Nothing is private :) That is the main reason why I like to keep my readers informed here at my blog. Know what you are posting and who are you posting it to. When you use a “free” service, you are giving them many many right in the terms of service and that goes for mobile apps on your phone as well. Be an informed consumer and remember these corporations are in it to make money, not to provide a free service to you. -S Yes, I am receiving emails of the sort from Facebook which goes straight to my spam folder. However, I believe it is simply a ruse used by Facebook to get me to sign up again. After all, we have all seen how hard they try to keep people with them, why not continue to market afterwards and trick people into thinking they still have people trying to contact us as an additional measure to bring people back. :) Yeah no problem. Welcome to my blog. Hope to see you around the site. I have recently signed up for Facebook account. But few days later, they blocked me from signing back in asking for my phone number or credit card information to verify my account. Since I don’t have SMS messaging to receive the text code, I clicked on “Call Me.” But facebook always has a system overload and can’t call. I don’t feel comfortable giving my credit card information to verify my account at all. Many told me that it’s phishing and facebook would never ask for those kinds of information. Facebook didn’t ask them. So I have no choice but to create another account but few days later, I was blocked again! I thought the reason for the block was because I was sending too many messages in my first account, so I limited the number of messages that I sent out. But facebook blocked me again! Why, why do they have to do it this way? Someone told me that maybe to prevent spam. Then why can’t facebook just limit the number of messages that we can send out instead of just blocking like this? Youtube only allow 10 links. This is so frustrating! I don’t even know why I was being blocked. There’s no explanation, no other information. I can’t go in the account at all! Help! Can someone talk to facebook about this. I have no choice but to give up. There’s no way that I’m going to give my credit card information to facebook when I’m not buying anything. Have you tried creating a different account? First of all thanks for the great post. I really would like to delete my PERSONAL facebook account, but I also have a small business and therefore a Facebook Page for my business which I can’t afford to delete since it attracts a lot of visits to my website. Do you know if there’s a way to delete my personal account without deleting my business Facebbok Page? If so, would I be able to log in only to my Page after my personal account has been deleted? Thanks a lot for your help. I don’t think FB deletes any account even after you have submitted the ‘delete my account’ request. I submitted this request sometime back, but accidentally logged into FB only to realize that the 14 day period which was to get over on May 30th had moved ahead to June 4th. Thanks, Ambika Something to keep in mind. Sorry man. Sent from my Mobile Clear all your cookies in your browser then try again. If that doesn’t work , email privacy@facebook.com and tell them to nuke your account. chanced up your reply for Maria’s woes on FB!! lol….. oh well, as said in my “sorrows” I am facing this problem too!! not being able to do anything. then I saw you posted this “facebook” email :O does it work? I mean I mean…..will they entertain emails request to delete accounts? I can hog onto this email address until they reply though….. oops! but that is on the provision that there IS a reply from there to act on my intention So that leaves emails and forums for general tech support and even then, good luck getting a real human. :) I’m guessing the system is monitored by a team “off-shore” and they do their best to get to all the requests. However even then, you will be lucky if you get a human. That being said, squeaky wheel gets the grease so keep trying and update us here on the final result! Would love to know! -S It sounds like you’ve done almost everything you could possibly do to have all the data removed from Facebook. Unfortunately, if you take a look at the Facebook terms of service – http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms, it states that you grant Facebook a license to use all the data uploaded even if the account is deleted IF the data is shared with other people. As I mentioned in my article, being that all data is instantly shared with Facebook Friends the moment you post it, this basically says you won’t need to delete any of that data. My suggestion would be to email privacy@facebook.com and explain the situation with them and ask them to purge all data from the system regarding your son. Again, the problem here is Facebook has close to 1 billion customers now. And if they get a support request from just .01% of them each month, that’s a stack of email which they could never hope to get through. A problem I guess with a free, popular service. Don’t expect any kind of customer service. Can you not login now into the account? You can try emailing privacy@facebook.com also. A couple years ago the only reason I opened a basic fb account while giving thee very least amount of information was to try and track down the possible owner of a possibly lost&found item, then around a year ago I finally got around to filling in my fb profile but I quickly discovered and I most assuredly determined fb moderator(s) were ridiculously censoring me in real-time regarding simple television info and so I tried to close the account but to no avail therefore I changed every single one of my profile entries to read as “This Account Is Closed” and as of this morning I continue to receive unwanted spam from fb no matter how many times I’ve unsubscribed and so I’m quite looking forward to their eventual downfall. Given each just one single chance at life it’s almost so amazing how so many dumb people are determined at making the world a worse place to live in. Arif Ahmed Nizamulhaq Qureshi -Steve Well, although you need a Facebook account to manage your business page, there’s nothing which requires you to include much personal information at all or even accurate data. So, worst case just delete all your friends on your personal page and remove all data/add bogus data. Another option could be create a new bogus account under a bogus name and make it an admin/owner of your biz page. So I think there are a few options. Hope that helps. -S I have never signed up and have NO INTENTION of EVER joining facebook. But now it seems, even though I never completed my registration, never even clicked any links in that email, they have my address. Already I’m getting one after another notes about “people you might know.” TRUST ME…. Anyone I WANT to know, already knows I won’t touch facebook. Anyone else, I don’t need or want to know. So the question now, HOW do I get my email OUT of facebook that they shouldn’t even have in the first place? Are there lawyers who handle this? Any class actions out there? If not there should be. This is just one reason I want NOTHING TO DO WITH FACEBOOK!!!!! I can’t believe how many people actually use it. Even the news! GEES get your OWN sites people. It’s really not hard. I’ve had my own since 1998. And when I delete something, it’s GONE! Anyone who knows me knows how to email, call, write….. NOT “see my facebook account.” Nothing but a data mining operation so you can be blasted with more and more ads. How I got signed up is a mystery to me but I’m out. It was exactly like your experience. There was not delete account button anywhere obvious. I should have written down all the crazy hoops I had to jump though to finally delete my account. I don’t have all the links I had to click on, but I do have the page I used to find the delete account link. The when I finally hit delete my account, They got all weird. are you sure. If you delete your yahoo account we will delete all your Flickr photos. Yahoo owns that site I think. It is like they are trying to bully you into wanting to stay. Just walk through the steps I outlined in the article. If you get stuck, post your questions here: http://forum.groovypost.com. It’s my free tech support help site. Registration is free and it’s easier software to help troubleshoot issues vs. here in the comments. Thanks, -S groovyPost.com Have them email you.
