Thinking about deleting your Facebook account? We can show you how.
Before we get to that, you might be interested to find what kind of data Facebook collects about you — and how long Facebook keeps your account data, even after you delete it.
What does Facebook know about you?
For that answer, we turn to Facebook’s privacy policy page.[i] As you might imagine, the list of what they collect is long—long enough that you’ll want to read it for yourself. Yet, broadly, Facebook provides the following summary as part of its June 2024 Privacy Policy.
Per Facebook, they collect:
- The information you give us when you sign up for our Products and create a profile, like your email address or phone number.
- What you do on our Products. This includes what you click on or like, your posts, photos, and messages you send. If you use end-to-end encrypted messaging, we can’t read those messages unless users report them to us for review.
- Who your friends or followers are, and what they do on our Products.
- Information from the phone, computer, or tablet you use our Products on, like what kind it is and what version of our app you’re using.
- Information from partners about things you do both on and off of our Products. This could include other websites you visit, apps you use, or online games you play.
The last bullet is an important one. Facebook very likely knows about things you do even when you’re not using Facebook.
How do they know about that? Increasingly, that comes through a technology called “server-side tracking.” It’s a form of ad and behavior tracking where a company’s servers communicate directly with each other. In this case, that’s a company’s servers and Facebook’s servers. It can track custom events like page visits, purchases, and the like. This way, companies can track the performance of their Facebook campaigns. It’s like using tracking cookies, with one important difference — it bypasses the user’s device. (Cookies rely on data stored on your device.) The process is invisible to the user.
How extensive is its use? A recent study by Consumer Reports of more than 700 Facebook users found that the average user was tracked by more than 2,200 companies partly using this technology.[ii] Consumer Reports was quick to state that their findings don’t reflect a representative sample because participants were volunteers, and the results weren’t adjusted for demographics. Yet it is telling that across these 700-plus Facebook users, roughly 7,000 different companies shared their data with Facebook.
Everyone has their own appetite for privacy, and we’ve all known for some time that with using a “free” social media platform comes a price — privacy to some extent or other. The more you know how much a platform knows about you, the better decision you can make about participating in it.
How long does Facebook keep your data?
As for how long they keep all that data and info they collect, the answer varies. Per Facebook,
- Your information, including financial transaction data related to purchases or money transfers made on our Products, may be preserved and accessed for a longer time period if it’s related to any of the following:
- A legal request or obligation, including obligations of Meta Companies or to comply with applicable law.
- A governmental investigation.
- An investigation of possible violations of our terms or policies.
- To prevent harm.
- For safety, security, and integrity purposes.
- To protect ourselves, including our rights, property, or products.
- If it’s needed in relation to a legal claim, complaint, litigation, or regulatory proceedings.
- In some cases, we may preserve your information based on the above reasons even after you request deletion of your account or some of your content. We may also preserve information from accounts that have been disabled and content that has been removed for violations of our terms and policies.
In short, deleting your Facebook account is no guarantee that your data will immediately get deleted along with it. Per the list above, Facebook’s Privacy Policy allows the platform to keep your data for an indeterminate amount of time.
Now, onto the steps for deleting your Facebook account.
How to delete your Facebook account
Before you permanently delete your account, keep a few things in mind. Per Facebook:
- 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.
Note that Facebook provides a 30-day grace period once you delete your account. If you want to hop back onto the platform, you can simply reactivate your account during that period. All your info, data, and posts will be there. After those 30 days, you’ll no longer have access to them.
As for the steps, that varies. If you’re deleting Facebook from a computer:
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & privacy, then click Settings.
- If Accounts Center is at the top left of your Settings menu, you can delete your account through Accounts Center. If Accounts Center is at the bottom left of your Settings menu, you can delete your account through your Facebook Settings.
If you’re deleting Facebook from an iOS device:
- From your main profile, tap
in the bottom right of Facebook. - Scroll down and tap Settings & privacy
- If Accounts Center is at the top of your Settings & privacy menu, you can delete your account through Accounts Center. If Accounts Center is at the bottom of your Settings & privacy menu, you can delete your account through your Facebook Settings.
And from an Android device:
- Tap in the top right of Facebook.
- Scroll down and tap Settings & privacy
- If Accounts Center is at the top of your Settings & privacy menu, you can delete your account through Accounts Center. If Accounts Center is at the bottom of your Settings & privacy menu, you can delete your account through your Facebook Settings.
We suggest one more step in addition to the ones above.
Remove your info from the data broker sites that sell it.
Here’s why you might want to do that … Given the way social media companies share info with third parties, there’s a chance your personal info might have made it onto one or several data broker sites. These sites buy and sell extensive lists of personal to anyone, which ranges anywhere from advertisers to spammers and scammers.
If the thought of your personal info being bought and sold puts you off, there’s something you can do about it. Our Personal Data Cleanup service can scan some of the riskiest data broker sites and show you which ones are selling your personal info. It also provides guidance on how you can remove your data from those sites, and with select products, it can even manage the removal for you.
[i] https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/?entry_point=data_policy_redirect&entry=0
[ii] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/
