Deleting my Facebook Account

I've had a Facebook account since they opened it up to the entire Internet. I've subscribed to tons of stuff, installed tons of apps and accumulated nearly 150 friends. It's time for a reboot. The unfortunate thing is that all pictures tagged with me will get un-tagged. Oh well. This time I'll just invite about 50 of my closest friends instead of every one I know.

I discovered that it's not easy to delete your account. The first thing I tried was to visit my account settings.



but I discovered that you can only deactivate your account there.



Here is what they say about deactivation.

If you deactivate your account from the "Deactivate Account" section on the Account page, your profile and all information associated with it are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook users. What this means is that you effectively disappear from the Facebook service. However, if you want to reactivate at some point, we do save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.), and your account will look just the way it did when you deactivated if you decide to reactivate it. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and expect their information to be there when they return to the service.

I clicked on Deactivate Account and I saw this screen showing me who would miss me and asking me why I'm deactivating.



So then I went to the Help Center searched for "Delete My Account" and still they tried to bury the most obvious and best matching link.



When you finally do click "Delete My Account" it warns

If you do not think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted, please keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content or information you have added. If you would like your account permanently deleted with no option for recovery, log in to your account and then submit your request by clicking here.





You then have to put in your password and prove you're a human.



When you finally pass that, you learn that your account has not been deleted. It's only deactivated for 14 days then it will be deleted. You see this text

Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, you will have the option to cancel your request.

The sent me this emails

Hi Patrick,

We have received a request to permanently delete your account. Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days.

If you did not request to permanently delete your account, please login to Facebook to cancel this request:

http://www.facebook.com/login.php


Thanks,
The Facebook Team



I then logged in and saw this



I clicked Cancel Deletion and saw this



saying that I canceled the deletion but my account was still deactivated. While it was disabled, I had people check to see if any photos of me were still tagged and they weren't. I also was not listed in anyone's friends list. Once I canceled deletion, everything went back to normal and I was once again tagged in photos and showed up on people's friends list.

I repeated the steps and canceled my account again. Now I have to wait until August 14 for it to actually delete. Then I can sign-up again and start fresh and new. I'll post back to this blog once I do that.

BTW, when I was logged into Facebook, I listed all of my friends and used a Firefox plugin to save the page. Now I can open that page locally on my PC and pick and choose which friends I want to re-invite.