Deleting an account in Facebook

I am not having success keeping up with Facebook week. It is Sunday and so far the "week" has been two weeks and I have not been regularly writing. So, this will be the last one for the Facebook series for right now.

There may be other things that you are curious about, so please feel free to give me ideas for future posts! Today I will be talking about getting rid of a Facebook account. What happens when you do not want your account anymore?

If you are thinking that you do not want to use your account any more go into the account settings and choose SECURITY. At the bottom you will see the words "DEACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT". When you click on it you have a second chance and Facebook does what it can to try to persuade you into keeping your account active. Even after deactivating your account you can choose to opt in or out of receiving email from Facebook from your friends.

Notice that they say "deactivate" rather than delete or totally shut down. When you do this Your profile is disabled (people cannot look you up) and your name and pictures are removed from anything you have shared. Your profile information and friend lists are saved in case you want to come back. This is often used for people temporarily. You can reactivate your account by logging back into it.


PERMANENT DELETION of your account is a different thing. In order to do this you have to send a request to Facebook to have it done. If you do this you cannot change your mind and come back to your account Information like your name, email address, mailing address, and IM screen name and other personal information is removed from their database. 

Another way of dealing with an inactive account is MEMORIALIZING the account. When someone passes away it is possible to leave their account up, but make it inactive as a memorial to that person.

True Confession: Most of this information has come from the Help documents available right at Facebook. You can easily find this type of thing out on your own, but maybe this summary is helpful.

p.s. Another place to look for information about Facebook is on their own Facebook page which can be found by clicking About Us at the bottom of the page or searching for Facebook in the search window. It is so full of information that I am not sure how you find what you want, but it is good to know about. I learned that Oprah is doing a live Facebook show!