What to do before deleting your Facebook account

Do you want to permanently delete your profile? There are some actions to exclude any remorse: from backing up your files to backing up your birthdays

You've been thinking about it for a few months now, and you've finally made the decision: you want to delete your Facebook account. This decision is not as rare as you think, in fact after the various scandals that have involved Mark Zuckerberg's company, many people have decided to wipe the slate clean to protect their privacy.

Of course, this is a decision that can not be taken lightly, especially if you have been subscribed for many years and have accumulated a huge amount of information and memories within the platform. But fortunately, Facebook allows you to fully back up all your data. At the same time, you can also save your contacts' birthdays on another device, so you won't lose track of them after deleting your account. In short, to complete the operation correctly you'll have to engage in some tasks.

Deleting Facebook account: how to delete data

If you have been subscribed to the social network for years, you probably have a lot of photos, statuses and other documents on your wall that you like to keep. We remind you that as an alternative you can delete all Facebook posts.

When you delete your account from Facebook all these will be lost and become unrecoverable. To do this, go to the Settings of your diary and select "Your Facebook information" from the menu on the left side of the screen. Then access the "Download your information" section that will allow you to transfer and store the data on your computer or other device. At this point you'll enter a screen where you'll find a list of all the documents you want to keep: from photographs, to statuses, to likes and comments, and so on. You can select some or all of them and then proceed by clicking on the "create file" button. After creation, the archive will remain available for download for a few days.

Third Party App Management

How many times when registering for an app have you chosen the "Sign in with Facebook" option? In this case, that platform used your social network credentials to perform a quick registration. However, the moment you delete your account, you might have problems logging into the said platforms. The first tip is to check which ones they are by accessing the "Apps and Websites" section found in Settings.

You might find platforms you use all the time like Spotify or Pinterest and in this case you can remove the connection with Facebook and log in with new credentials. In any case, by keeping the same email address, the channel will have no problem recognizing you, maintaining your activity history and other settings.

How to stay in touch with family and friends

One of the reasons that prompts many people to maintain an account is the ability to stay in touch with old friends or relatives that you don't get a chance to meet often. When deleting an account, remember to communicate your intentions to your closest contacts and ask them for an alternative address to stay in touch.

An additional suggestion is to pin their birthday on another medium: in fact, there will no longer be the Facebook alert to remind you to wish them a happy birthday. It will be an opportunity not to lose sight of you.

To check the birthdays of your contacts just access the main screen of Facebook and then go to the "Events" section in the menu on the left. By accessing this page you will also have available the "Birthdays" item where you will find the list of all the relevant dates to remember. Alternatively, you can access the profile of the people you are interested in and find out when their birthday is in the "Information" section.

Make sure you delete the account

Many times, users confuse deactivation with deletion of the profile. The former allows you to reconsider at a later time: so in fact you make the account invisible but when you log in again, the profile and all user information are restored.

Deletion instead allows you to make a clean slate. To delete the Facebook profile you just need to go to the following address and click on "Delete account".

As you can see, on the same page you can also deactivate the profile or back up the data we mentioned at the beginning. After deletion, all data will be deleted within 90 days.