Community Chat

[mima]

My reply to the below post:  I know for a fact you can change your name because I did it for my mom.  She wanted to add her maiden name.

It was easy to do.  If you don't want your name to come up during a search, why not just change your name to something totally different.  Wouldn't that be as good as deleting your account?

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Biftu wrote:

You cannot permanently delete yourself from Facebook -- this is not true.  Even though I myself have tried in vain, my name still appears with nothing there, but I'm still listed.  I have looked at this many years ago. I never posted anything and only had one friend who was my god daughter who sent pictures of her kids.  For years I kept getting notices that someone sent me things which I never opened. Thankfully these notices have stopped.  Bottom line, you just can't reach them to talk about your issues.  And, my friends notices were all from Facebook.

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[Biftu]

No MIMA, I don't want to change my name, I want out permanently.  The point is you have to log in which I want nothing to do with.  I tried logging in once to delete and that is when the emails started coming again.  

[mima]

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@Biftu wrote:

No MIMA, I don't want to change my name, I want out permanently.  The point is you have to log in which I want nothing to do with.  I tried logging in once to delete and that is when the emails started coming again.  

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Sorry, it was just an idea and was trying to help.

[sunshine45]

you CAN fully delete your facebook......i have helped a few people do it. you DO have to log in and follow the steps.......and it isnt instant as stated on facebook.

[dooBdoo]

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@HappyDaze wrote:

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@dooBdoo wrote:

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@Biftu wrote:

While I certainly am in the minority, I would NEVER go on Facebook.  My friend joined when it first started and tried to cancel, it is not possible to permanently delete your account no matter what they say.  All these years of not going to the site, yesterday she got 150 emails coming to her from facebook!  Someone must have hacked her and there is no way to contact Facebook without logging in which, of course, she would never do.  This is a real problem that they offer no customer support other than online.  This has put her in a real dimena to get this rectified.  Scary.

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@Biftu, You can deactivate your Facebook account (a temporary step -- you can reactivate later if you want) or completely delete the account (a permanent deletion).    It's true the information from our accounts is in Facebook's archives, but it simply isn't available to hackers if we've deactivated or deleted the account.   It won't cause harm for your friend to log into the account to fix any problems, perceived or read -- or her friends can use the report feature to let Facebook know if they do think her account has been hacked.

My guess is the email messages your friend has received are not actually from Facebook and, instead, are from a completely unrelated spammer.  There are ways to check -- hovering the cursor over the sender, looking at the full message header or source, etc. -- and find out who actually is sending the mail.

I'm sorry that happened to her.  I know it's frustrating.  But even though Facebook is far from perfect, I do think we have a tendency to blame them for anything we even think might be remotely related to them.

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Can you explain how you can delete your account and not simply de-activate it?

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Hi, @HappyDaze!  As I mentioned in my previous post, there are answers and detailed instructions to most of these questions in Facebook's Help Center (found in the drop-down arrow menu, upper right corner of desktop version of Facebook, or at this link:  https://www.facebook.com/help/) and their Help Community, too (found in the Help Center or at this link:  https://www.facebook.com/help/community).  That's where @sunshine45's info on this specific topic is found (thanks for stepping in, @sunshine45!).

[dooBdoo]

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@Biftu wrote:

You cannot permanently delete yourself from Facebook -- this is not true.  Even though I myself have tried in vain, my name still appears with nothing there, but I'm still listed.  I have looked at this many years ago. I never posted anything and only had one friend who was my god daughter who sent pictures of her kids.  For years I kept getting notices that someone sent me things which I never opened. Thankfully these notices have stopped.  Bottom line, you just can't reach them to talk about your issues.  And, my friends notices were all from Facebook.

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@Biftu, Yes, you really can permanently delete your Facebook account.  I've helped several friends and family do this.

It helps to understand that when you actively us a Facebook account your name starts to become "linked" with other accounts and pages, or even private messages or chats.  As a result, even if you deactivate or delete the account, the name will remain in those places but it's no longer linked to an account (so it's not "clickable" -- it's sort of like a "placeholder" but connects to nothing). 

So, in fact, the account and all the information it held is gone but your name remains in a few places unless you first go in and remove all the activites you engaged in, "unliked" all the "likes," etc.   If you want your name to be displayed in a different way, you need to change it before you deactivate/delete.

I wanted to add:  I can understand why it might be confusing.  I've had experience designing/developing/programming/installing/supporting software, so it makes sense to me (well, most of the time), but it's really not clear.  And I don't always do a very good job of explaining it.

The "150 emails" to your friend wouldn't be valid Facebook messages, as I said before.   There are problems with the platform and certainly things I don't like about it, but they don't spam our mail that way.  And once an account is completely deleted they don't have access to our email address -- but it's important to remember if our privacy settings aren't secure we might inadvertantly provide our email address (and other personal info) to nefarious accounts.  Or our Facebook friends might not be careful, and they might allow our personal information to be shared.   This is the reason it's so important -- essential -- to keep up with all the settings and also all browser security features and options.

[missy1]

FB can never be permanently deleted, ever.

[dooBdoo]

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@missy1 wrote:

FB can never be permanently deleted, ever.

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Hi, @missy1.   Yes, we can delete our accounts permanently.  As explained earlier in the thread, what we add to Facebook does go into their archives and would be accessible only in extreme circumstances and only could be accessed by Facebook IT stafff with the express direction of officials.  But if we follow the steps to properly delete our own account, it goes away and none of it is available to us or to any other users.

[Suziepeach]

I permanently deleted my Facebook too but still get prompted to log in on occasion..  and let me state again, yes I pemanently deleted it..

[dooBdoo]

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@orangegarnet wrote:

I permanently deleted my Facebook too but still get prompted to log in on occasion..  and let me state again, yes I pemanently deleted it..

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Hi, @Suziepeach!  I haven't seen you around lately -- hope you're well.

In what way are you prompted to login to Facebook?