If you’re frustrated with Facebook, find it sucking up way too much of your time, are concerned about your privacy, or simply no longer have a need for the social network — it’s remarkably easy to put your account on pause.
By deactivating your account, you can not only disappear from Facebook, it also stops your friends and followers from being able to comment on your posts or share any links or messages on your wall.
How to Deactivate Your Account
To temporarily deactivate your Facebook account, in a browser, go to Settings > Security > Deactivate Your Account. You can also deactivate your account through the Facebook mobile app. Go to Settings > Account Settings > Security > Account Deactivate. You will be prompted to enter your password in order to deactivate your account.
As Facebook points out, deactivating your account will “disable your profile and remove your name and photo from most things you shared on Facebook.” So if you’ve posted something on a public page, for example, it will simply read Facebook user. Things that will still be visible are messages you sent to your friends. Once you deactivate your account, you will be automatically logged out.
To reactivate your Facebook account, all you have to do is log back in.
How to Delete Your Account
If you want to completely delete your Facebook account, you’re going to have to reach out to Facebook. They don’t offer users an easy way to delete accounts themselves and once deleted, some of your data may remain on Facebook servers. Facebook says that it may take up to 90 days to delete any data stored in their backup systems, but that data will not be accessible on Facebook.
Facebook says that copies of “some material” may remain in their database but will bear no personal identifiers. They give only one example of what that data might be — log records — without going into any further detail. When deleting your account, if you log in during the time that it takes for your account to be deleted, it will cancel the deletion.
You can also download a copy of your Facebook data before deleting the account by going to Settings > General > Download a copy of your Facebook data > Start My Archive.
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