My first post was about why I deleted my Facebook account.
This post will be about how. Because I think there may be other people like me out there who want to delete their Facebook accounts, but they don’t know how, and even if they did know how, they are afraid that they might lose all the photos and data they have put on Facebook. Then after you are done with Facebook, how do you communicate with people who are still on Facebook, especially those who ONLY use Facebook?
Well, I’m here to help.
This is actually pretty easily done.
First, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I didn’t really completely delete Facebook. Yes, I know, but hear me out. My thought before I actually deleted my personal Facebook page was that I had some things that I may want to do on Facebook still. For example, I’m thinking of starting my own photography business, and to be able to advertise on Facebook may be beneficial. So, I did create a “business” Facebook account, which I intend to only use for business. I will not friend anyone or follow any pages…it’s strictly for business. Also, I own a forum, which offers a Facebook login to my members. I have to maintain a working Facebook account to continue to have access to the app that allows the members of my forum to log in using Facebook.
My point here is that you may have a business also, or you may have a community page you run, or whatever, and while you may not want to keep your current personal Facebook account, you may still want a “business” Facebook account. My advice would be to create that account first, so that you can transfer ownership of any pages or apps you may want to keep.
Once that is done, and you are all ready to really delete your Facebook page, First thing is first: SAVE YOUR DATA!
Many people may not know this, but Facebook allows you to, at any time, download all your data from their servers. This includes all photos and videos you have uploaded to Facebook. Downloading them from Facebook is fairly easy. PC Mag wrote a good guideline on how to do this, so I suggest clicking here and reading that.
Keep in mind that you will need an actual computer to do this, because it involves you being able to download a .zip file and you need to have space somewhere to “unzip” that zip file. What is a zip file? Click Here to find out.
Okay, now you have downloaded all your info from Facebook so you won’t lose anything. Now you can initiate the deletion of your account. I’m going to again point you to a PC Mag article that will show you exactly how to go about doing this.
Facebook will technically give you 14 days to change your mind. So, at any time in that 14 day period you get cold feet and decide you can’t go ahead with deleting your account, you can get it back.
Good Luck!