CITIZENS' ISSUES
Thinking of deleting your Facebook account? Keep these in mind
Over the past few months, social media platform Facebook is getting engulfed in new controversies. This includes fake news, Russia's alleged intervention and influence to elect Donald Trump as American president. The latest is misuse of users' personal data by Cambridge Analytica for targeted campaigns that is believed to have targeted about five crore Facebook users.
Many users from across the world are now contemplating deleting their account from Facebook along with all personal data. I will not call this is a knee jerk reaction, but then this is how we, as humans are hardwired to deal with contingencies. Nevertheless, from data record perspective, even if you delete your Facebook account, not all data and information will be erased from their servers. While Facebook claims this retained data may not reveal profile of the user, remember, this giant social media platform also owns WhatsApp and Instagram and still has access to your personal data for creating your detailed profile.
If you think that deleting Facebook account is still the best option, then here is how you can do it. The first step is to download all your data stored or recorded by Facebook. This includes all your timeline info, messages, photos, posts that you shared and hidden data on ads that you have clicked, and IP address you have used to access Facebook over the years. For this, after login, you need to go to Settings page on Facebook. Here under General Account Settings, download link is placed at the bottom. Click on this link and download copy of all your personal data from Facebook. Remember you can download this data only when your account is active. So before deleting your Facebook account, do not forget to download copy of your data.
Now you can proceed to delete your account. However, the link for deleting your account is not readily available or displayed on your Facebook accounts page. Here is the link to delete your Facebook account, https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account but click only after downloading copy of your personal data.
However, remember, deleting account from Facebook does not happen instantly. It takes few days after your click on the above link to terminate your account. Also, you will have to completely stay out of your Facebook account during this period. If you sign in during this period, then your account will be removed from termination list and you will start everything afresh. The process to completely delete Facebook account takes about 90 days. As I mentioned above, keep in mind that not everything associated with your account will get erased. For example, even if you have deleted your Facebook account, the messages you sent to friends will still be accessible for them.
You may also want to try other options. First, control yourself, or your urge to share everything on social media. Secondly, check all the information you have shared, messages you have posted, photos you have uploaded and so on. Delete all that can reveal more personal information about you, your near and dear ones, including all contact details. Always remember, social media has become a gargantuan business opportunity and hence do not make the mistake of thinking that it is your friendly neighbourhood where you can share everything almost free of cost.
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