Question from Marie: I love your tips Rick, and I visit this site every morning to see what’s new!
Now, my question: I’m trying to completely delete my Facebook account because I’ve seen nothing but harassment on there since I signed up over a year ago.
The trouble is I can’t find a way to delete the account, just deactivate it. Can you help me find it? Thanks!
Rick’s answer: Thanks for the kind words Marie. I really appreciate your kindness! If you’re bound and determined to delete your Facebook account, it’s really easy to do, but finding the page you need to visit in order to do it is almost as hard as driving a nail into an oak board with a wet spaghetti noodle.
Before I give you the link for deleting your account, let’s make sure that’s what you really wish to do…
There are basically two ways to take an active Facebook account offline. The first is to deactivate it, which effectively makes your Timeline and every bit of information associated with it immediately disappear from other Facebook users. They won’t be able to find your page via the Search box and they won’t be able to contact you.
Deactivation has more or less the same effect as deletion, with one huge difference: If you deactivate your account it is only hidden, not removed. You can easily re-activate it if you later change your mind and everything will be as it was before you deactivated it.
This is what I would recommend that you do, at least in the short term. That way you can think it over for a while before making a final decision.
If you’d like to deactivate your Facebook account, here’s how:
1 – Log in to Facebook with your email address and password.
2 – Click the little “gear-shaped Menu icon in the top right-hand corner of the page and select Settings from the drop-down menu.
3 – Click the Manage Account link and Facebook will guide you through the process of deactivating your Facebook account.
The second way to take your Facebook account offline is to permanently delete it – what I refer to as the nuclear option. Deleting an account does just that. It removes your account and all data associated with it from Facebook’s servers, leaving you no way to change your mind and reactivate the account later.
In short, once a Facebook account has been deleted, it is gone forever!
If you truly wish to permanently delete your Facebook account, it’s extremely easy to do. Here’s how:
1 – Log in to your account with your email address and password.
2 – Visit this page on the Facebook website and click Delete My Account.
I hope this helps Marie. Good luck!
Bonus tip #1: This post explains how to “unfriend” someone on Facebook without really unfriending them.
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Hi Rick, thanks a bunch for the interesting information you share with people. Please I accidentally sent a thumbs up to someone who isn’t my friend on Facebook and that automatically sent her a friend request but I blocked her a few minutes later. Would she still see the request and thumbs up?
She shouldn’t see either the friend request or the thumbs-up, Hannah. If you had messaged her prior to blocking her she would see the message, but she won’t see anything else.
Thanks Rick. But the thing is that I already sent the thumbs up which sent a request by default before I blocked her. I’m just worried if she’ll see my Facebook name, pictures and profile.
In that case she will see just your name and nothing else. And she won’t be able to respond to you.
Hi Rick, I just created a facebook page on the my sister’s phone and already a lot of information is missing I don’t know how to correct it,1.is not showing me how to invite friends 2.I can’t invite friends and I didn’t open it with email and password so I decided to delete it and create another one and I don’t know how to do that, so can you tell how I can delete it or upgrade without password please help .Thanks
Hi Margaret. This page explains how to delete a Facebook page with an iPhone:
https://www.wikihow.com/Delete-a-Facebook-Page
Hi Rick, I see that someone has opened another account in my name. I keep getting friend request notifications on that account and there are usually 70 to 90 notifications when I open my email. The account that was opened has just under my first name and my last name with no picture. My actual account has a picture and is under my maiden name and my married name. It shows that I just opened this account in 2017 but I have been a FB member for about 10 years now. I am afraid that some how they are getting my personal information so I would like to delete this account. How can I delete this without it affecting my actual account?
This is happening a lot right now, Marti. You can have the fake account removed by reporting it to Facebook. This post has instructions for doing that:
https://www.ricksdailytips.com/beware-duplicate-friend-requests/
How in the heck do I delete my facebook account. I want out, today. When I follow your instructions, it tells me that my password is incorrect, and I know that it is not. Please help me delete.
It sounds like someone has hacked into your account and changed the password, Linda. If you’ve already jumped through all the hoops required in order to change a forgotten password with no results, ask a friend to view your profile page from their account and report the account to Facebook. That might prompt them to remove it.
What if I can’t remember my password but I can bring my old account up??!! I’m desperate!!!! HELP!!!!
Kim, if you have a new account you can “Report” the old account to Facebook as a duplicate account. They should then remove it.
That actually worked after me having crappy advice for about 1,000 times.
Thanks a lot whoever you are.
I just got sick of the adverts and never really used facebook.
The one thing that proved to me that there is a scam somewhere is the fact that they make it so hard to close an account – really, really difficult – i.e. requested help to close the account but facebook always skirted the issue.
I smelled a rat immediately.
Thanks again.
Simon Connor
HGS UK Ltd
(recording studio)
I’m sorry you had that experience Simon, but I’m glad this post helped you.
First off,I’d like to say Thank You for helping ALL of us,I know I greatly appreciate it 😊,my question is…I have an account that I have reported to Facebook MANNNNNYYYY times and I thought they took care of it until today,I set it up summer of last yr on accident when I bought me a new IPAD,I THOUGHT,but anywho,this certain account popped up when I entered my email address so now it’s tied to my real account that I use everyday and I don’t know how to unlink the 2 😭😭😭….PLEASE HELP ME 😰
Thank You So Much 🌹
Joey, is this unwanted account a personal account or a business page?
Hi.. I am have trouble finding my previous account and through sheer frustration this one was created unintentionally. Please help as the customer service hasn’t been answering
Lea, if you’re wanting to have an account removed you can use the link in the post to request its removal. If for some reason that doesn’t work for you simply have a friend “Report” the account as a duplicate account. That usually gets them removed fairly quickly.
Hi Rick, if I delete my Facebook account, can I use the same email address if in case I decide to create a new account?
The answer is no, Facebook will mark that email address as unavailable. But you might be able to have them release it so you can re-use it. I believe this will help you:
https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=784325055013545
Thanks, Rick. I deleted my account. Do you know if this keeps FB from passing my information around?
Yes it will, Cindy. And you’re very welcome.
I followed your advice but when I get to the security code there is none. It tells you to refresh your browser but that doesn’t work either. I think face book is deliberately doing this to stop people from jumping ship. What can I do about this?
I’ve heard other recent reports of this happening, David. I’m checking into it as we speak and I’ll post my findings here after I have them.