Delete your account—part 3.
Before we delete the accounts, consider removing all the content manually first.
Hi friends, I know I’m a day late with this one, but there’s a lot going on ok? Cut me some slack. Here’s our next installment of Delete Your Account!
Once you’ve got your download—wait until you get the download—I HIGHLY recommend deleting all of your content manually. Yes, it will (probably?) be deleted by them eventually (maybe), but why let them have it any longer than necessary? Don’t give them the option to keep you on as a ghost profile.
What should I delete?
Facebook
To see an overview of all your activity, logs, etc. from Facebook and remove it, check this page: https://www.facebook.com/your_information and this page: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/guide/data_subject_rights (click on “Delete your information” to select which account(s)).
There are SO MANY TABS on that page, clicking through this information alone will probably make you want to barf when you see how much they know about you and what you do on and off of their platforms. If you see an option to clear the data they’ve collected in there as you’re clicking around, just do it.
Here’s what I would also remove:
Even if you do nothing else here: Delete your profile details (this is in that same Settings area from above)—things like birthday (change it to something random), email addresses, phone numbers, change your name even to something random if you can, relationship statuses, anything and everything should be either removed (if possible) or falsified (if not)
Delete all the photos you’ve uploaded and remove tags from photos you’re in
Delete all the posts you’ve made
Unlike/unfollow any pages you’ve liked
Remove all your friends
Just keep deleting until there’s nothing left! This could take awhile, and if you give up, I certainly won’t hold it against you. It’s the account deletion that’s most important anyways.
Fake Them Out (Optional)
If you’re REALLY wanting to throw them off your scent, when you’re finished deleting everything you can from your Facebook account (and you have no friends), some people suggest liking random pages you don’t care about, clicking on ads for things you’d never buy, posting random content, basically, anything you can do to dirty up the data they already have on you to destroy the profile they’ve created of you from data.
Instagram
Deleting all your posts on Instagram can be done as a group, Mashable has a great step-by-step guide for this so I’m not going to rehash it here: https://mashable.com/article/delete-all-instgram-posts
Also unfollow any pages, remove any followers from your page, and delete any profile information. You can also try going here: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/guide/data_subject_rights (click on “Delete your information,” select your Instagram account, and see what they’ve got).
Messenger
Messages: It would seem you have to delete each message manually if you want to remove it (explained here: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/194400311449172?cms_platform=www&helpref=platform_switcher)
Chats: You can delete the chat threads themselves too, but as best I can tell they will still be visible to the other person who was in the chat previously.
Contacts: To delete all your contacts, go here: https://www.facebook.com/mobile/messenger/contacts and click the button that says “Delete all contacts.”
WhatsApp
In the app settings, go to Chat backup and turn Auto backup OFF (and delete any previous backups).
Go back to “Chats” (still in Settings) and tap “Delete all chats” (scroll down to the bottom to find it).
If you gave WhatsApp access to your contacts, you can go into your PHONE Settings (not in WhatsApp), go to Apps, find WhatsApp, and remove permission for Contacts.
Leave any “Communities” you may have joined as well.
Threads
I admit, I’ve never used Threads, and we didn’t cover downloading your data specifically from Threads but there’s a guide here for that: https://help.instagram.com/259803026523198.
As far as deleting your content goes, I assume it’s a lot like the rest of Meta’s products—remove all your posts, unfollow anyone you follow, and remove any followers you have.
Twitter/X
Same deal as above—you want to delete all your posts, remove all the pages you follow, remove all your followers, remove your profile details, etc. There are some tools out there that can help with this. If you’re using Brave browser (or Chrome, bleh) this extension looks pretty good (and possibly free), though I haven’t tried it personally: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tweet-delete-bulk-delete/mppblpedoemekekejafmcopafmkagkic
TikTok
Yep, another annoying one. I believe you’ll have to just delete all your videos individually. If someone knows a better way, I’m open to it, but I can’t find anything to help with this one! Don’t forget to delete your profile information too.
A Note About Ads
Throughout this process, if you come across any settings that say “Ad Preferences” or “Ads,” I recommend opening those up and seeing if there are any ways to delete what they’ve already collected about you. Most of these apps have that as an option, but it’s a LOT to cover each version of that since some of them keep this information in multiple places to convolute the removal process (I’m looking at you, Zuck). I’ll just say, if you see something that looks like that, go in and delete anything they’ve got in there too.
GEEZ LOUISE that’s a lot to cover… and a lot to do! I know this is a messy process, and this is one of the steps that I would say take at your own pace or maybe even skip altogether if you’re feeling overwhelmed! The important thing is to not give these companies any MORE data (or money!) than they already have by NOT USING THEM, and ultimately DELETING THESE SERVICES FOREVER.
We’ll get to that part next week I think. For now, you’ve got plenty to keep you busy!
Keep on keepin’ on,
KL