Deactivate or delete your Facebook account


Are you completely done with Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Then you can delete Facebook or have your account deactivated. We show you how to do that here.

Deactivate your Facebook account

If you deactivate your Facebook account, it will be paused, so to speak: Your profile will be removed from the site, as will most things you have posted to Facebook (messages will remain, however), but Facebook will keep your data for in case you decide to come back. You can always reactivate your account by logging into Facebook.

To deactivate your account, log in to Facebook and navigate to Settings. Select General and scroll in the window General account settings down to you Manage account see. Choose edit and tap the option Deactivate your account.

Facebook will try to persuade you to stay by showing you photos of your Facebook friends and asking why you want to deactivate your account. Once you’ve told Facebook why you don’t want to be friends anymore, click the button Deactivate and then on Deactivate now, and Facebook will deactivate your account.

Delete your Facebook account

If you delete your account it will be completely gone: You will no longer be able to log in again to view or copy something you posted on Facebook, and if you want to use Facebook again you will have to start from scratch.

Facebook recommends that you download a copy of the data you have published on the site before deleting your account. While logged into your account, open the settings menu on Facebook by clicking the gear icon at the top left of the page. Then select Account Settings and search the page General to Download a copy of your Facebook data and click on the link. You will then be guided through the process of downloading an archive of all your Facebook data.

The company does not immediately clarify how to delete your Facebook account, but to do so log in to your Facebook account and go to Facebook’s account deletion form. There you start the process to delete your account completely.

Click in the form Remove Account and confirm your password. Click one last time Remove Account, this time a button with an exclamation mark in front of it. Now your account is off Facebook and no one can visit your profile anymore.

Note: Once your Facebook account is gone, you have thirty days to change your mind. After that, it is really gone, so you should only delete your account if you are absolutely sure that you will not use Facebook again.

Account blocked

It can also happen that your Facebook account is blocked. This usually happens when you do not act according to the rules of the social media site. A blocking of your Facebook account is usually not temporary, in other words, if you do nothing, your account will remain blocked and will be deleted over time . What can you do? We explain this in detail in this article.

Cambridge Analytica

After last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, several people have decided to delete their Facebook account. What happened?

Facebook hit the headlines after it came to light that the personal information of millions of US users has been misused to conduct political campaigns. Facebook allowed information from about 50 million users to be collected for research purposes on the condition that the data would be deleted afterwards. That did not happen.

The data was acquired by researchers Christopher Wylie and an academic from Cambridge University through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, which you could log in with your Facebook account. Not only did the researchers obtain the data from the hundreds of thousands of users of the app, but also from the users’ friends.

Rather than erasing the obtained data, the Cambridge University academic sold the data to Cambridge Analytica – a data analysis agency that, among other things, was involved in the Donald Trump and Brexit campaigns. Whistleblower Christopher Wylie said the data was used to build models that “played on the inner demons” of the individuals whose company had the data.

Documents show that Facebook already knew at the end of 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had the data in its hands. However, the social platform has not subsequently warned users and has not attempted to recover the data. When The Guardian and The New York Times reported that they were publishing an article about the Facebook data breach, Facebook tried to get ahead of the scandal by publishing an article of its own stating that Cambridge Analytica was being banned from the social platform because of it. not erasing acquired data. It is not clear whether the data has since been deleted.

In short: delete or deactivate your Facebook account?

Briefly summarized:

Want your Facebook account deactivate?

  • Log in
  • Go to Settings
  • Select Your Facebook data
  • Scroll down in the window
  • Select View Bee Deactivate and delete
  • Choose edit
  • Choose the option Deactivate account
  • Confirm with Continue to deactivate account

Want your Facebook account remove?

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