
Delete Facebook Account - cdransf
http://www.deletefacebook.com/
======
slackingoff2017
I didn't delete my account but I let it go dormant about 4 years ago. Don't
miss it a bit. Social media is all about making you feel bad.

Its a platform for people with low self esteem to dream about what their lives
could have been. For older folks to remember the past. For the average guy/gal
to keep tabs on old flames.

And most importantly a place for jackasses and rich people with various
complexes to show the world how great their lives are.

And Facebook is great at figuring out your weakness. For me for example,
Facebook became a window for re-imagining my life in college.

No thanks. The trip down memory lane is fun every once in a while but the old
picture catalog in the closet has morphed into an insidious entity, always
beckoning you back. My phone vibrates, someone posted a new picture of you
from 5 years ago and 50 people like it. Remember that day? All those people.
Dont you?

Fuck that, I'm done being screwed with by a platform designed to give you your
fix.

~~~
lucideer
It's great that, as Facebook offers you no value, you've chosen not to use it.
Commenting on that in order to encourage others to do the same is great, as
frankly, Facebook is a toxic company and the more people move off the platform
the better.

However, your experience is not universal and your comment, rather than
criticising the platform itself, actively disparaged current users of it,
which is unconstructive and offensive.

~~~
slackingoff2017
I hoped to strike a chord with people currently using it for the same reasons
I did. My post is partially self-deprecating and doesn't attack anyone
specific. I'm sure there's people using the platform with no issues, and I
think it's fine to criticize something for the behavior its built to induce in
people.

~~~
lucideer
That's fair enough, but the wording of your statements do seem to broadly
imply "if you use Facebook, you are either X, Y or Z negative stereotype"
rather than "these people exist on Facebook".

------
PrimeDirective
I "deleted" my account on Facebook about 7 years ago. This January they
randomly reactivated it just like that. It's public and visible. I haven't
logged in there, because that would just show them I want it back. I'm pretty
sure this is in breach with their own terms. And maybe even illegal in the EU.
I haven't had the time to take any action not am I sure what should I even do.
Maybe report this to some EU watchdog?

~~~
dbrgn
To avoid that kind of stuff, when I deleted my account a few years back, I
used an automated script to delete all my posts. Then I went through my
profile and replaced all fields with empty or no fake data.

If they ever reactivate my account, there's not much left to see.

By the way, I thought quitting Facebook was going to be hard. But I haven't
regretted it a second. Same thing with Whatsapp.

~~~
simonswords82
I get Facebook but why did you ditch WhatsApp? If you don't get bogged down in
groups it's just a slight upgrade on SMS no?

~~~
corn13read
Facebook owns whatsapp and can change the encryption keys at will without the
conversation owners knowing.

~~~
Canada
If "Show security notifications" is enabled in security settings then they'd
get caught, so I don't think Facebook is going to start doing that. The
address book and metadata they have access to are more useful to them anyway.

~~~
tripzilch
except for all the false positives. every time someone gets a new phone in a
group chat, someone has to ask "did you change your phone or is someone
snooping at you", which creeps them out, because it's off by default, and so
we ask less and ignore it, "probably changed their phone".

it's terrible ux for security, it could have been much more transparent and
actually encouraging proper security behaviour.

------
mavidser
I'm still on the fence about the fact that having a facebook account is a bad
thing.

I have seen it consuming a lot of my time in the past, and I did deactivate my
account for a few months last year. I improved my life a lot, there were fewer
distractions, and I generally had better self esteem. Not much was missing,
except for a few conveniences I had with the account.

I have since reactivated my Facebook account, using it sparingly now. Instead,
I uninstalled all IM apps from my phone, and turned off Email/slack/work
notifications. I do not have the Facebook app, or the website in my bookmarks.
I receive no alerts, no messages anywhere. Every week or so, I take 5-10
minutes to scroll down the News Feed (btw, doing this has the effect that I
usually see much higher quality posts which Facebook thinks I've missed rather
than a whole stream of memes and ads). I may or may not read the messages, and
don't reply a lot. I have my email and phone number listed on my profile, so
if anyone needs to really contact me, they almost always find ways to do so.

This gives me the option to use the perks at my will without being addicted
and consumed by it. Visiting a city? Use the graph search to connect with
friends you can visit. I can look up old photos at will if referencing
anything. All this, given the fact that it's one of the only ways to connect
with most of my non-tech (who rarely check their emails) friends in an
asynchronous manner.

PS: This is not a comment praising Facebook. I definitely like having my
privacy in my hand, out of NSA's reach. I'm just giving a reason as to why so
many people might not be keen to delete their Facebook profile.

------
Waterluvian
What's the best way to test if my account is deleted?

Every month or so I'll get a handful of emails from Facebook saying it looks
like I'm trying to log in and asks if I need help with that. Either they're
trying to get me to re-join in a very pathetic way, or someone else is trying
to sign up using my email address, causing Facebook to think they want to re-
activate my account.

~~~
eatbitseveryday
I received the same emails and even as text messages... I did not delete, just
haven't logged in for a month or two.

In my opinion, the messages are fraudulent about their intentions. They
misrepresent a 'security-related' incident to get me to go on the site again.

~~~
cyberferret
I don't remember receiving anything like this, even after taking months away
from the platform.

Are you sure your internet profile elsewhere is not subjecting you to doxxing
attempts? I know friends who are in publishing or blogging etc. with fairly
well known profiles on the internet, and they seem to be targeted far more
regularly with attempted unauthorised logins to their email and social media
accounts.

~~~
628C6l0
This. It's far more likely to be doxxing attempts.

I was contacted by an undergraduate asking for grad school advice. Five
minutes later there were several emails in the inbox from Facebook with
exactly that content. I don't normally receive anything at that address
(everyone I know emails me at a different address). How do you expect me to
give you advice when you pull this shit on me?

------
webbrahmin
My experience with deleting my LinkedIn accounnt; Tried deleting. LinkedIn
responded with a message saying I have active ads running and I am the creator
of a LinkedIn group. I ran an ad campaign ages back and created a group long
time back. I am stuck with LinkedIn because of this. Worse than dark pattern.

~~~
ci5er
I've re-read your comment a few times. Now - it's early - but I'm missing
something.

Is this a "Dark Pattern" (I'm not even going to try to parse how something can
be darker than dark)? Or is it a safety feature (although maybe badly
designed)?

Maybe all you have to do is shut down your ad campaign and your group. Then
deactivate/delete your account. Would this not work?

~~~
_asummers
It's a dark pattern if when creating those entities within LinkedIn if it's
not clear that by doing that, you're removing the ability to ever close your
account. But I agree with you -- deleting is definitely worth trying.

------
brightball
I always wonder if programmers have a different experience on Facebook than
other folks. I deactivated my account this year and a lot of it was because I
could identify the patterns of content that I was being fed by the algorithms
and didn't care for it. On top of that after I had the same political
conversation with the same person for about the 5th time I just decided it
wasn't worth the time anymore.

Do nonprogrammers not pick up on those patterns?

~~~
aphextron
>Do nonprogrammers not pick up on those patterns?

I really think they don't. Thats a big part of the problem. Lay people are
being tricked into thinking that their Facebook feed is a reflection of
reality rather than a highly curated set of articles designed to appeal to
their specific sensibilities. They have no concept of what goes into the
platform behind the scenes. They have no concept of the fact that there is a
building in California full of thousands of world class scientists whose sole
purpose in life is to get them to check that notification on their phone. They
have the illusion of choice when it is pure psychological manipulation

------
philovivero
What I really want to know: how to permanently delete your entire presense of
Google. All your emails, sent or received, all your G+, all your calendar
reminders, Hangouts, etc.

Seems a daunting task. Especially the part where you have to contact everyone
you know and ask them to delete their emails and hangouts with you.

~~~
danieldk
_What I really want to know: how to permanently delete your entire presense of
Google._

You can't. Google reserves the right to retain/use your data indefinitely:

 _The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of
operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a
business listing you have added to Google Maps)._

Source:
[https://www.google.com/policies/terms/](https://www.google.com/policies/terms/)

~~~
tpallarino
I don't know about other services, but Chrome history is kept for 1 year.

~~~
sleavey
Wait, Chrome logs your browsing history with Google? Actually, I'm not
surprised.

~~~
sam_goody
Aside for the browser storage, they also log every search request made from
your browser. Since the only way to type a URL is to put it into the search
bar, that means they get a log of every page you visit, how often you go
there, how long yu spend there, etc. without triggering any other licenses or
boxes.

The same profiling is done from Safari and other Chromium / Blink browsers
that have the "awesome address bar"

I have read that when you visit a page with Analytics (which is like
everywhere) Chrome has special handling so as to give them a more complete
dataset without it being the browser that is officially collecting it.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_they also log every search request made from your browser. Since the only way
to type a URL is to put it into the search bar, that means they get a log of
every page you visit, how often you go there, how long yu spend there, etc.
without triggering any other licenses or boxes._

Not sure I follow. Why can't chrome just detect whether you entered a URL or
not? If URL, load without sending to Google. If not a URL, send as search to
Google.

~~~
Macha
facebook is not a url. facebook.com is. You need to type the first as part of
typing the second.

------
rbjorklin
I'm hoping GDPR will help get ALL my data removed. [1]

[1]: Right to be forgotten: [http://www.eugdpr.org/key-
changes.html](http://www.eugdpr.org/key-changes.html)

------
brijeshb42
After the article, I was presented with an ad to create a profile on Facebook.

~~~
flexie
One ad driven website making a business out of trying to get you off another.

Wonder what the internet would be like if there was an easier way to make
money than ads.

~~~
659087
I'm guessing it would be a modernized version of the way things were before
every jackass with a selfie stick or a blog decided that they deserve to make
a living shitting their thoughts and lunch pictures onto the internet.

------
smegel
Delete mainstream news while you are at it.

I cut out facebook and all news save HN and a couple of subreddits and a
strictly local news site.

My life has improved.

~~~
camillomiller
Wouldn't that be even a stricter bubble than what acebook serves you?

~~~
smegel
I suppose that would be one way of looking at it.

I prefer to see it as restricting information flow to that I am strictly
interested in, or has a potential real-life impact on me (local news). It's a
bubble of my choosing curated by me.

And I would try and escape the bubble not by expanding my online exposure to
dis/information, but by getting out into the real world and doing more stuff
there.

~~~
laumars
I'm not passing judgement on your personal ability to seek out
counterarguments but more generally speaking this is exactly how echo chambers
come about. People are generally only interested in news that confirms their
pre-existing biases and will often cite the same arguments you make in defence
of their echo chamber.

I'm not saying I don't sympathise with your approach as a persons time is only
finite. But if you are interested in fact or even just balanced opinion then
you do need to be aware of the bubble you're creating and be willing to
question what you read / hear on any issues of importance.

~~~
smegel
I don't think you understand.

I am not cutting myself off from one side of mainstream news. I am cutting
myself off completely.

I have no idea what is happening with Trump or North Korea. I am vaguely aware
there was a flood in Texas.

The subreddits I subscribe to are special interest subs that have nothing to
do with mainstream news or opinions, and are relevant and assist real world
activities I do.

I only read local news that could actually be relevant to me, like a new
restaurant opening up in town, or special interest sites like HN that feed my
professional interest in technology and programming.

I have old been cold turkey for about 6 weeks, but I hope to get to the point
where I have no knowledge of whatever "big stories" (or small) the MSM is
occupied with.

My basic philosophy is that the main/only thing important in life is achieving
my personal goals, and the only stuff worth knowing about is things that can
directly affect that outcome.

I'm looking forward to walking in to work one day and see everyone's ashen
face turn to surprise at my apparent indifference to some big "world event".
Talk to me when life changes in my 50km real world bubble.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Right on. I try to do the same thing, except about once a week I will briefly
scan through Google news or the Apple News App on my iPad.

Addiction to mainstream news does nothing to help me achieve my life goals. I
have friends who (I think) satisfy the definition of addition, when it comes
to watching hours of news a day. What a waste of precious time.

------
unlmtd1
Cmon everyone! Matrix has a good data structure and working clients, including
e2e. Can't see anything that far ahead. matrix.org

~~~
kuschku
And is heavily reliant on a single corporate sponsor, for server, protocol and
client development, AND running the centralized server with basically all
matrix users on it.

Wasn’t the goal decentralization?

~~~
Arathorn
_sigh_ Please stop spreading FUD about Matrix? We no longer have single
corporate sponsorship (our historical main sponsor pulled out because the
project is so successful they didn't see why they should be the only ones
paying the bill), and based on what we know of the overall network, <50% users
use matrix.org.

~~~
kuschku
Oh, so now you have 3 companies sponsoring you again. A short while ago only
PIA had become a major sponsor (which also already happens to own two major
IRC networks, and be the largest sponsor of some IRC clients)

When we’re discussing "decentralizing" things, these things become important.
In those cases, we shouldn’t give such companies any influence in any way. As
we’ve seen with Google a few days ago, relying on funding from a company can
end up with you having to either give up your project, or follow their
demands.

~~~
Arathorn
We haven't given our sponsors any influence in any way, and we are aiming for
a lot more than 3. The sponsorship is purely in return for their logo
appearing on the website and promoting them on the blog etc as sponsors.

------
anotheryou
I got a test account banned for a david hockney picture that had a single-
brush-stroke ass-crack visible (I wanted to see where they draw the line. For
new accounts far earlier than I had expected). They refused to delete the
account afterwards, it's just permanently deactivated.

(this was years ago, before I even had a real account)

~~~
Tepix
banned is not the same as deleted.

~~~
anotheryou
Exactly. And getting banned seems to invalidate your right to get deleted.
Under german law this would be illegal.

------
aryehof
Nice to see simple instructions with direct links to relevant leaving Facebook
pages. Hopefully they remain up to date as Facebook makes changes to its "exit
policy".

------
eksemplar
Ive kept my account although I've wanted to delete it several times, trimmed
it down to make it look like anyone's ordinary life. I sometimes posts
pictures from social events I attend, but only clean stuff that looks like
something a normal nerdy person would do.

At one point I figured that I might need it to seem normal sometime in the
future.

Traveling to the US last year I'm glad I did, passed through the border
checkup much easier than my other privacy loving friends who deleted thei
social media accounts.

I also kept my gmail address even though I moved to fastmail. Mostly use it
for signing up to things and unimportant stuff, but it sure was handy at the
airport.

I guess it still exposes some of my life, but it's not like I can ever become
anonymous again, since they never delete anything.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Traveling to the US last year I'm glad I did, passed through the border
> checkup much easier than my other privacy loving friends who deleted thei
> social media accounts.

This is sad. As a US citizen, I have no idea how to even begin fighting crap
like this.

~~~
danielrmay
Donate to the EFF. They're the only organisation providing solid advice on how
to protect yourself against these (IMO unconstitutional) border searches [1]

[1]: [https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-
border-2017](https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017)

~~~
jimktrains2
I've been contributing monthly to the EFF (and ACLU, among other organization)
for years. And will also encourage others to do so! They're great
organizations!

The issue is the EFF and ACLU aren't going to be able to get sweeping
legislative changes themselves. We, the constituency, need to be very vocal
action as well.

I just feel ignored and dismissed by my Congress Critters.

------
itchyjunk
I had de-activated my account ~7 years ago. Back then, deleting facebook was
not an option. I thought I was done with it till recently (~2 months) i
started getting all sorts of notification and what not on the linked email.
Even got an email saying my `linked phone number` was removed. I never had one
and had not used fb on phone ever. It was however an old number of
mine(walmart straight talk number i had for ~4 months around the time i had
deactivated it). Idk how that got added or approved or when that happened but
w/e. I hated the idea of having to re-login to delete. (I wish i could have
used some other burner computer or anything other than my laptop but maybe
this is too much paranoia.) But I did recover password and went through the
deletion process.

I didn't even bother asking for copy of my data or w/e. And I don't even care
if NSA or whoever has a copy of it. By making leaving facebook hard, it made
me bitter about it back then. Hopefully my account will be deleted from
facebook and i never have to see use that site again.

P.S. Thanks for the link HN, I'd volunteer my personal data to some of the
people here if they ever needed to compete with FB A.I! o/

------
ajmarsh
My favorite article on the subject. Unfortunately, it's down had to use the
Wayback machine to find it.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120719002103/http://betabeat.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120719002103/http://betabeat.com/2011/12/in-
which-eben-moglen-like-legit-yells-at-me-for-being-on-facebook/)

------
EternalData
I wonder if there's a comprehensive guide somewhere to maintaining control
over your personally identifiable information across all platforms.

------
nnd
My only problem with deleting a Facebook account is the Facebook login, which
some of the apps enforce and most importantly developing apps which use
Facebook login (for test purposes).

Surely I can create a fake account for that, but then you also need to resist
the peer pressure of people trying to add you as “friends” all the time.

~~~
quickben
As time goes, that won't be your only problem.

Every business will try to tie you down as much as possible. Fb just has
something very nice and heavy knots.

------
cconstantin
The thing that prevents me from leaving Facebook is a couple of Pages that are
driving traffic to my websites and humans to my communities. What to do?

------
nine_k
I have a Facebook account that I don't use. It lists my real name and certain
public details. I keep it to prevent anyone from imposing me on FB.

~~~
drdeadringer
When you must use a service to prevent impersonation, something is wrong.

------
methodin
Is it plausible to flag yourself via other people so your account gets
blocked? Wonder if that would yield a permanent removal.

------
2845197541
Does this delete private messages? Or can recipients still see your messages
and name.

~~~
gfredtech
when I first deleted my Facebook account, I decided to keep tabs on it(letting
a friend check if she could still see messages we exchanged). For a while, my
name was shown as part of the message(but it was black, so you could not click
it like a link). I made her check later on and it just said "Unknown user" or
so, I cannot recall the exact phrase. Our messages were still there

~~~
vcanales
"Facebook User" is what used to show up on my inbox, for deleted accounts.

------
chauhankiran
ironically Google ads showing fb ad to register.

------
alvil
There is no such thing as permanently delete Facebook or Google account :)

~~~
pasta
I also believe there is no such thing as not having an Facebook or Google
account. They create it for you by creating your tracked profile. The only
thing that happens when you create an account is that they can give the
profile a name.

~~~
InternetUser
I'd be interested to hear your response to the point I made in my above
comment in this thread. The fact that younger people increasingly view
Facebook as uncool is a big problem facing the company; yes, Facebook Inc.
still has Instagram, but Zuckerberg himself saw the rise of Snapchat, and
tried to buy them out. The stock may be crap right now, but in terms of where
people are sharing their minds and their lives (i.e. personal data), Snapchat
is very relevant these days. In that way, it definitely does resemble Twitter;
it's a very important part of the daily lives of tens of millions of people. I
was about to say "daily _online_ lives," but everyone is online for at least
half the waking hours of their day now. (And for the record, virtually every
B2C Internet stock stays below its IPO price in its first several months.)

~~~
Fnoord
Snapchat's stock is low because the hype has passed and the bubble has
bursted. Their service is lackluster as the core principle of the company
(sending media which can only be temporarily accessed) isn't a way to protect
data since the sender and receiver have different interests because of their
lack of a relationship based on trust and longevity. In that regard it makes
sense the service is popular with youth as they don't fully grasp trusting
relations, they take higher risks, all because their brains have not yet fully
developed. You don't see adults using Snapchat for anything serious. They
might just as well use more common, equally secure platforms e.g. WhatsApp, or
face to face.

Snapchat would've been very cute in the '90s before people had e.g. cameras on
their phones, and when phone screens were lower quality (although it'd be
problematic to make a picture in the first place then). Nowadays, its
painfully obvious how irrelevant the service is.

The only relevance Snapchat has is their userbase, mainly consisting of youth;
personal data, the databank as a whole (pretty much the same but worth
mentioning), and the potential to start a new service under the Snapchat flag.

