How Do You Delete Your Facebook Account And Start From Scratch
Note: Some information in this post may be outdated. Please use this post as a guide only, not step-by-step instructions.
Earlier this year, I went through my Facebook Profile and read all the status updates and comments I have posted way back in 2006 when I first joined Facebook. Reading back 4+ years, I was really embarrassed in what some of the things I said. I wanted it gone and removed. I started deleting some things, but found it near impossible to delete all this information, so I asked myself “how do i delete my Facebook?”. From that point, I decided I should delete my Facebook account and start again from scratch. In doing so, their are a few things that you need watch out for to make the process clean and easy as Facebook makes it somewhat difficult to delete your profile. To help you out, I have put together this brief tutorial on how you can delete your Facebook account and start again.
By following this tutorial, you will be able to use your same email address, Facebook username, and password, but you will lose everything such as status updates, posts, comments, pictures and friends.
So how do you delete your Facebook account: Before You Begin
Before you being, I must stress, that you will lose all your friends you have and everyone will need to re-add you or re-confirm your friendship. Some people may or may not want to re-add you back as a friend on Facebook, so just be careful. I would also take note of all your friends you have to make it easier to remember who to add.
I would also tell your friends that you are deleting your account, so if they get another friend request from you, they will know it’s not a fake. Or they may ask you questions why you deleted them in the first place.
Update: If your account is the administrator of any groups, or pages, it is highly recommended that you assign someone else as an administrator of that page of group so when you delete your account, there will be someone that can reassign you as an admin (and so your page doesn’t get deleted). If you are the only admin for your page or group, get someone you trust to become an administrator temporarily.
I must also warn you that you complete these steps at your own risk, because you may lose important information such as your applications and games, ad’s, credits, and other important account information that is not covered in the scope of this tutorial. If you do run into trouble, contact me and I will try my best to help you out.
WARNING: FOLLOWING THESE STEPS WILL COMPLETELY WIPE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT DELETING ALL YOUR FRIENDS, POSTS, COMMENTS, APPS, GAME PROGRESS, FACEBOOK CREDITS. THERE IS NO WAY TO UNDO THIS ACTION!
Note: This method is only for deleting personal Facebook accounts. If you delete a page, it will be deleted straight away.
Step 1: Know The Difference Between Delete And Deactivate
It’s important to note the difference between the two, and I have previously written a post about the difference and how you go about the deleting and deactivating your account. In this tutorial, you are going to delete your account – but don’t do it just yet, just read and understand the difference.
Step 2: Backup Your Facebook Account
When I deleted my Facebook account, I didn’t have the option to backup and download my Facebook information. So before you delete your account (where everything you publish on Facebook will be lost forever), you are first going to backup your data. To do this, click on “learn more” in your Account Settings next to “Download your information”. You can access your Account Settings by visiting https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php
You will then be presented a number of steps and security measures before you can download your profile.
Once you have downloaded your information, continue to Step 3.
Step 3: Change Your Email Address, Password, And Username
This is a crucial step, because if you don’t do this, you won’t be able to use Facebook for at least two weeks using the same login details. Back in your Account Settings, first of all, change your email address to another email address that you have. We are doing this, so you will be able to instantly signup with your same email address later on in Step 5. Also change your password and username. It is also important to do these so you can keep your original Facebook username (I.e. www.facebook.com/yourprofileusername) (See update below) and to stop other devices such as your mobile phone or laptop accidently logging in to your account and stopping the deletion process. Once you have done all this, continue to Step 4.
Update: A commenter mentioned, that there is a Facebook FAQ stating that usernames cannot be transferred between accounts, so the changing your username step may no longer work, so try this at your own risk.
Step 4: Delete Your Account
Now that you have backed up your profile, have changed your email address, password, username, and told your friends you are deleting your account, you can now finally go through the deletion process.
To delete your account, click on https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account and follow the process. I won’t explain it step by step because I don’t want to delete my Facebook account. But it will take at least 2 weeks for it to be fully deleted. Do make sure you read each step carefully.
Step 5: Sign Back Up To Facebook
Now it’s time to sign back up to Facebook. You should be able to simply register your account using your original email address and password because we changed it in Step 3. Once you have confirmed your account, you can follow Facebook’s basic instructions, re-add the information to your Wall and Profile and re-add all your friends.
Just a tip, you may not be able to register your username straight away. It took me a couple of weeks before I could re-register my old username.
Step 6: You’re Done
So once you have added all your friends again, you have now successfully started your Facebook account from scratch. You may have thought the question “how to delete my Facebook account” isn’t so hard after all. All you had to do is follow the right procedure to crate a new Facebook account. For some further reading, you may want to read how I protect my personal and online identity so people like future employers don’t read the naughty things you get up to. Another thing I regularly do is delete any status updates and comments I post, so I don’t have to do this again in another 4 years. If I maintain it now, it makes it easier later on.
If you need some assistance on how do you delete your facebook account, I am happy to help you out. Just leave your message in the comments.
Well, when I tried to delete my account (everything, including email address), I got a message saying the account would be deleted in 14 days. Four days ago, I logged in the account and found a message saying the account would be deleted in one day. Today, I was still able to log in with the old email address and password though I found all the contents were gone, for now. I thought I should have been confronted with a message saying the account doesn’t exist.
Maybe you accessed your account too early. Log in again, and try deleting it again.
Will I be automatically unblocked by people that had blocked me before. This happened to me and it wasn’t my fault, my long time guy friend found me in fb a few years back and we were constantly writing each other but as friends as we always had been, His girlfriend found out got completely crazy and she went into his account and blocked me. Some years have passed and I heard the broke up, but I know he doesn’t know how to block or unblock (he is not very computer friendly) so I am still blocked. So my question is if I save all my stuff like you said and open a new account, will I still be blocked by him?
“So my question is if I save all my stuff like you said and open a new account, will I still be blocked by him?” –> No, because it’s an account level block. Therefore, you’ll be able to contact him through Facebook.
I’d say send an email to@facebook.com. This will get sent to his primary email address. Better send it from an email address not associated with your Facebook account.
Or, log out of Facebook, go to his profile, find a friend, log back into Facebook and message his friends to tell him to unblock you.
This is really handy information. I have a queston slightly off topic, but hope you can help. I created a second page under my existing account for an upcoming book. Needless to say the name is “too long” so it doesn’t show properly on top of the cover photo (it shortens it, and not in a good way – plus it is white instead of black). I was told if I change the page name, I would lose the friends which wouldn’t be a good thing at this point. Any suggestions or ideas?
If you change a page name, it doesn’t have any affect on those people that have like the page.
Hello, my account is scheduled for deleting on September 1st. But all of my profile is still visible? Is like nothing is going on. Also it was supposed to be deleted today the 18 and now it randomly says the 1st September. I re did the whole process I just need this stupid account gone! Lol
Hello Sarah,
Everytime you log in, it will reset the time. 18th to the 1st is exactly 2 weeks.
Make sure you are logged off every device (changing your password helps), and make sure you do not log in
so. here is my delima. I know you can easliy block people from your facebok account. HOWEVER, that means that the same freinds that you have incommon are still getting your posts, etc. and possibly sharing with the person you blocked. I have been reading through all of the posts on this site all are very helpful, but my question is, can you have more than ONE facebook account? if you use a different email account and user name can that account be completely detached from the other account. So, I want to have an account that is soley my school chums, and another account that is only my friends that i share the same hobby with.
Technically it is possible to have two Facebook accounts, but it’s against Facebook’s terms of service, and they may delete one, or both of them without warning. However, this is highly unlikely.
If you block someone on Facebook, they won’t see anything about your profile. If you upload a picture or write a status update, your blocked friends won’t see it. If you are friends with Friend A and you blocked Friend B, and if Friend A and B are friends, if you make a comment on Friend A status update, blocked Friend B won’t see it. If it’s just you and Friend A in the comments, friend B will only see Friend A’s posts, not yours, and then this would like weird for Friend B.
So instead of two FB accounts, you can make use of Friends lists. You can put all your School mates in one list and your hobby friends in another list and only share status updates to those groups of people.
Hi,
ive recently removed my primary e-mail address from my facebook account, deactivated it and added that email to the new one..
Now I wish to get the previous one back so ive removed the email address from the new account and made a new one up so that when I use my old log in details it recognizes my old account but says its disabled, ive tried to fill a appeals form in but it says im not allowed to use the contact email address so im well and truly stuck!
is there a way to ‘un disable’ my old account as I really wish to get back onto that one as ive had it forever.. any help is appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
Debbie
To reactivate your Facebook account, you just need to log in again. So on your original FB account, log in with the new primary email address that you set and the password.
As long as you didn’t “delete” your Facebook account, you should be fine: http://www.jackcola.org/2010/12/how-to-delete-and-deactivate-your-facebook-account/
HELLO IM TRYING TO MAKE MY FRIEND AN ACCOUNT. SHE DOESNT HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT AND SHE WONTS ONE SHE USES MY COMPUTER. I DONT WONT TO DELETE MY PAGE.CAN I MAKE HER ,HER OWN ACCOUNT SHE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MINE IF SO HOW DO I DO IT ?
Just log out of your Facebook account and signup for a new one (https://www.facebook.com/help/225861947424289), switch web browsers, or use private/incognito mode for your friends account
Greetings,
I recently created a page on Facebook and then erased it for I couldn’t figure out how to change the name so I thought if I erased it I could change it to what I wanted. The only thing I was trying to change was the capital letters. Now that I have the name I want, it’s not allowing me to access it if I type http://www.facebook.com/ the name of my page where as before(yesterday) I was able to access it using www. My question is, do I have to wait 24 hours for it to work again and not come up as this page is broken or been permanently removed? Please help
If you were trying to change the name, Facebook has strict rules in place. So you can’t have names like “MyBusiness” but “My Business” is accepted.
Since you have set a username, deleted the page, and created another, you 1) haven’t set the username for the page yet, or 2) Not able to use the username again as it was already claimed by other (now deleted) page.
if i delete my fb account permanently then will username appears in the messages sent to others or should i personally change my username before deleting the account so that my name should not appear in others messages to who so ever i have sent messages…
If you change your username, or you delete your Facebook account, you can no longer use the username again. You used to be allowed, but not anymore.
For messages that you have sent to other Facebook users, the content of those messages will still be there, however, the name would appear as “Facebook User” without a profile picture.
Please I want to delete an facebook account I opened last 6years I lost the number I used to open it please how can I delete the facebook account I need help please
Please try and follow the steps outlined here: http://www.jackcola.org/2013/06/i-am-having-trouble-logging-into-facebook-how-can-i-log-in/
You just have to hack it .. Learn how to do that from any Master ICT .. Honsetly youtube , dailymotion , metacafe , vimeo and so on doest help you .. They just cheating you .. Just trust me okeyy ^_<
Hope you can help on my news feed on Facebook. It shuts down every time.Tried to get in touch no answer
Please provide more information about your issue.
I wanted to delete my facebook permanently, but I kind of miss it cause without it I feel left out of the loop… My friend list was gone… Is there anything u suggest? Please help…
If you deleted your account, you will need to sign up again and add all your friends.
If you downloaded your Facebook data, you could look at who’s in your list and manually re-add them.
They hacked my account. I can’t get on anything. My gmail is no good or my password. What can I do?
Please go through Google’s Forgot Password process located here: https://www.google.com/accounts/recovery
hey! thank you so much for this ! i got a question tho, if i open a new account with the same username as before, will there still be links to my new profile on other people’s pictures and posts that people tagged me in when i had my old account?
Hello Dana,
Facebook updated their username policy stating once a username has been registered, no one else can use it. So you won’t be able to create a new account with an existing username.
So to answer your question, it is no.
Apparently someone found an anonymous sex facebook account of mine, finding & using my same mobile phone’s IP number used on the real Facebook account openly linked to my name.
I have multiple facebook accounts: 2 legit ones. My present active Gmail account, & my older “deactive” Yahoo account which I rarely reactivate but do sometimes. My others accounts are kinky sex accounts under fictitious names. BOTH of those accounts are connected to inactive AOL & hotmail accounts. One of those fictitious sex accounts is active the other is intermittently active–like the Yahoo account. There is no open info linking me to those fictitious sex Facebook accounts, they are anonymous with nothing linking them to me. No face photo or mutual friends, nothing.
More than 2 years ago, using that Yahoo account (no profile or picture) I messaged a not so attractive female high school classmate (platonic friend) with a backhanded apology for a bit of a rough joke– I didn’t get a reply.
Subsequently my life unexpectedly changed when my parrot died
He was my only real family or significant other. Our bond was emotionally symbiotic. Since then I opened up a new gmail account with a profile, picture etc. That was meant to be for music publicity, but I have to confess at times I got aggressive with people who mocked & bullied me in high school. On one occasion I attacked my home town because of their pollitical conservatism & the resulting eroding of our social safety net. (I can’t get on disability in spite of having a generative neuro muscular condition thanks to right wing ideology being accepted & prevalent among the masses–sheep!) I opened called my classmates “sheep” & also made the mockery & bullying I wndured an issue.
Just a few months ago I briefly reactivated that yahoo account & got a reply from my HS friend. Apparently she found my original 2 year old message in a Facebook folder where it shouldnt have gone. We actually had a productive & congenial exchange of messages on Facebook on both my old Yahoo account, but mostly the newer nicely groomed gmail account. However, she did tell me that she was still close friends with 2 of my worst high school adversaries, that I didn’t want to hear.
So without warning I blocked her on both the Yahoo & gmail Facenook accounts. Frankly because she was friends with people who harmed me, but most importantly things were different after my birds death. My priorities were different & I regretted my apology & breaking the ice with her (She didn’t even rember the incident I apologized for, why should I have bothered)
Last week on Facebook I tagged 3 friends from my high school (all 3 were also her friends) & alludes to my post months ago harangueing my town & classmates, rinding them I don’t regrety animosity expressed about them. Just for the occasion I umblocked several mutual friends, just so they could read that post & learn why I hate my town so much! One of those people I unblocked was the same female classmate I had ubruptly blocked after chatting with her.
48 hours later I accessed all those accounts that I had unblocked, just to block one last time! I couldn’t fond her. It was unlikely she deleted her account, so she must have blocked me preemptively. Good thing, but as aatter of curiosity I accessed my secret kinky sex account. She couldn’t be found! So I reactivated the other anonymous sex account & bingo there she was
I went to my Yahoo account, reactivated that & bingo she was there too.
Obviously somehow she was able to access the secret anonymous Facebook Sex account using just my IP address. (No other way to find that account linked to me!) Obviously Iade that account to be anonymous with no idea it could be linked to me using my unanonympus account. Obviously she went looking for multiple Facebook accounts knowing I communicated through two accounts & she only had immediate access to one (the gmail account) How could she find a second active Facebook account not otherwise identifyable as mine without the cooperation of Facebook?
Facebook may display the account to your friends because if you access them from the same IP address, Facebook assumes you know each other since you live in the same place.
Plus, when someone blocks you, and you can’t find that person on your account, you will be able to on another account because that person is not blocked.
A few years back I had changed my names a few times on facebook, finally reaching a limit. So after I got married & wanted to change my last name, facebook requested I send them a photo id showing the name change. Flash forward a few years forward & now I wish I could shorten, delete or temporarily change my last name but facebook has blocked me out of making any name changes. Is there any way I can overcome this or would I have to delete my facebook account & start a new one?
Hello Jan,
Out of curiosity, what is the limit value?
But it looks to me that you are out of luck.
Hey, all I want to do is close my account and open a new one. So I will change my email username etc but how can I transfer photos? The friends I can re add – the ones That I want to stay friends with. Help! 🙂
Hello Nicola,
You can’t transfer your photo’s. You will need to re-download them and re-upload them again.
One way you can do this is to download your Facebook data. That way you have all your account activity, and then you can just reload them.
Also, you can no longer transfer your Facebook username between accounts.
Hi Jack,
I am the opposite of a computer Geek – I am computer paralyzed. I had to have a facebook page for a job application, so I created one – didnt get the job. I have never used the account & due to an abusive person trying to find me, I want my name completely deleted from facebook which I’m sure I wrote and asked them to do a long time ago. I have since created an account in another name for security reasons. I really need to delete my original name but I cant even get into it anymore – have tried applying for new password etc & I think now I’m just locked out. I don’t even know who to write to at facebook to ask them to delete it? Complicated I know but very frustrating. Thanks Cheryl
Do you remember what email address you used? The only option is to use the “Forgot Password” link.
Hello SIR/MADAM,
I want to delete the Facebook account of my boyfriend because He and I cannot open it anymore and my boyfriend doesn’t like that His name is in public and our photos because it’s good for the reputation in his work. We already forgot the email and password. Please help me to delete/close his Facebook account.
Thank you so much SIR/MADAM.!
I deleted my account how come it’s just come up on friends page as people he may know
Hi
I deleted my Facebook account around 3 months ago but forgot to change my email address before doing so. Will I still be able to create a new account using that same email address since my old account has been deleted?
If you deleted your Facebook account, you will be able to use the same email address as there is no account associated to a Facebook account.
So frustrated. I too, started my first acct in 2006 with very little knowledge …picked it up again a few years ago and opened a new account because I had no clue how to get in after so long so I had two accounts that confused all my friends . I want to dump it all again and use a gmail acct instead of the shared email that my husband and I use. I have reset my password so many times I want to scream .. Help me
Hello Karen, log into your old Facebook account, and delete it, following the instructions I have provided in this post. Log into the latest Facebook account, and go to the Account Security section and change your email address to one that is not shared.
My problem was through a series of stupid moves on my part, managed to Friend a number of my son’s friends I was in process of deleting. Very quickly I had hundreds of People I Might Know…..
Thank you! Thank you! I have totally deleted that account. None of those characters will ever find me. And I will soon have a new account and see pictures of my grandkids!
Just,,thank you.Been wondering what to do or “how” that it is done.Now,,I wonder about it no more.Hope you have sum good luck today.,,,,later,,,,David.
I want to delete my Facebook account