How to delete your Facebook account

On Firefox, you can limit the social media giant tracking your online activities through the Facebook Container extension without deleting your Facebook account. Though, *wildly gestures at news headlines over the past couple of years*, we don’t blame you if you want to stop using the app for good. You may have even deactivated your Facebook account before and found that you can log right back in. Here’s how to actually delete Facebook through the mobile app:

  • Find the menu icon on the bottom right.
  • Scroll all the way down.
  • From there, go to settings & privacy > personal and account information > account ownership and control > deactivation and deletion.
  • Select delete account, then continue to account deletion > continue to account deletion > delete account.
  • Enter your password, hit continue and click on delete account. Facebook will start deleting your account in 30 days, just make sure not to log back in before then.

Here’s how to delete Facebook through your browser:

  • Find the account icon (it looks like an upside-down triangle in the top right corner).
  • From there, go to settings & privacy > settings > your Facebook information > deactivation and deletion.
  • Select delete account, then continue to account deletion > delete account > confirm deletion.

It may take up to 90 days to delete everything you’ve posted, according to Facebook. Also note that the company says after that period, it may keep copies of your data in “backup storage” to recover in some instances such as software error and legal issues. 

More information from Facebook

With our lives so online, our digital space can get messy with inactive and unnecessary accounts — and forgetting about them can pose a security risk. You’ll be off to a good start with our one-stop shop for deleting online accounts, but it’s far from exhaustive. So here’s a bonus tip: Sign up for Firefox Monitor. It alerts you when your data shows up in any breaches, including on websites that you’ve forgotten giving your information to.

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