Delete Facebook Account – The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica continues, and in the last post, we spoke about what happened. In past couple of days, Facebook’s shares tanked. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder has been called to the UK to explain how he could let all of this happen. Facebook’s Chief of security reportedly is leaving. And finally, WhatsApp Co-founder tweeted late Tuesday afternoon that it’s time to delete Facebook.
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
Why is it a big deal if a co-founder of a messaging company declares to the world to delete Facebook? In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars. Brian Acton made 6.5 billion of that amount. He was on Facebook’s board until recently before he left to pursue his passion – privacy and encryption. It must come as a blow to Facebook when such an esteemed former employee makes such statements. But such is the atmosphere on social media where everyone feels betrayed.
So…Is it possible to delete Facebook?
Yes. It is possible to delete Facebook but it’s not a simple, straightforward process like other social media apps. If you decide to do this it cannot be undone however if you cave in and log back in, the deletion process effectively gets canceled. How to delete Facebook? Before we proceed further, let us ask this question first.
Delete or Deactivate?
Facebook explains the difference between deleting and Deactivating.
Now that you know the difference, let’s go ahead and delete the Facebook account.
Click on Settings
In General Account Settings, click on Download a Copy.
Click on Start My Archive
Once the archiving is complete, you would get a notification which looks like this…
Click on the notification to download your data
Click on this link to start and Click on delete accounts
Enter your password and captcha information 
Click OK
As you can see the account is now in deactivated state and if you don’t log in again into Facebook for the next 14 days, the account will be deleted completely. Facebook says that for the whole user data to be deleted it will take about 90 days and even during that period your friends cannot find you or message you.
Final thoughts:
If you want to cut ties with all of Facebook products you should know that Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook. While WhatsApp claims to be totally independent of Facebook and same cannot be said about Instagram. WhatsApp features end to end encryption and the company says that they don’t have any access to the information shared not the app. It is up to you what you want to do.
Image Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnoTgL4FU3U
