How To Permanently Delete Your Account on Popular Websites

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We all have an increasing number of sites and online services we’re members of, and sometimes it all gets a little overwhelming. At times, we just need to delete our memberships to some sites, either in an effort to simplify our lives or just because we’ve grown tired of a particular site or service.

What we often don’t realize when signing up for all these accounts, though, is how difficult it can be to permanently delete our accounts when we’ve had enough. Some require complicated, multi-step processes that can stretch over the course of days (or weeks). Others take less time, but still require multiple steps by the user.

Below we’ll take a look at the account deletion processes of popular websites and services, and how easy or difficult they make it. Then we’ll discuss why sites make things so complicated, and some things to consider when designing your own deletion policies.

Facebook

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Difficulty (on a scale of 1-5, 5 being hardest): 5

Deleting a Facebook account is a bit more complicated than many other services. There are two options for getting rid of your FB account, one that’s permanent and complete, and one that lets you change your mind later.

If you just want to shut down your account for a little while, with the option to reactivate it later, you can deactivate your account. This is simple: just go into your account settings and click on the “deactivate account” link. This immediately makes your account invisible to everyone else on Facebook. If you decide at a later date that you want to reactivate your account, it’s as simple as reactivating.

If you’re looking for something a little more permanent, though, you’ll need to submit a request to Facebook. The tricky thing here, though, is that they don’t immediately delete your account, and if at any time before it’s permanently deleted you log in or otherwise interact with Facebook, your deletion request will be canceled. For that reason, it’s a good idea to go around to any computers or devices (like your mobile phone) that you access your account through and log out (deleting saved passwords is also a good idea to prevent an accidental login).

Then you can use the form found here to request deletion. Remember not to log into your account at any point after that. There doesn’t seem to be any official notice on how long it takes, but unofficial reports say 14 days. To be on the safe side, you may want to wait a month or more before attempting to login to confirm your account has been deleted.

More information on deleting your Facebook account can be found in their FAQs.

Twitter

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Difficulty: 2

In contrast to deleting a Facebook account, deleting a Twitter account is relatively easy. All you need to do is go into your account settings and click on the “Deactivate my account” link at the bottom of the page. This is a permanent deactivation, though it can take up to a month for your account and information to disappear entirely from their system.

One word of warning, though: if you think you might want to use your email address, username or phone number on Twitter in the future, make sure that you change them prior to deactivating your account. Whether these things are permanently blocked from Twitter in the future or only temporarily isn’t specified, but it’s a good idea to change them anyway.

You can find more information on deleting your Twitter account here.

MySpace

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Difficulty: 4

Deleting a MySpace account is a bit convoluted, but doable. You’ll need to login to your account and then go to the “My Account” link, and then select “Account”. Scroll until you see the “Account Cancellation” section and click on “Cancel Account”. This is where it gets a little bit complicated. MySpace will then send you an email with instructions for completing your account cancellation. Except the email doesn’t come right away, and can take a couple of days to show up. Once you get the email, it asks you for confirmation again that you want to delete your account, but then deletes it immediately.

All of the above works just fine, as long as you still have access to the email address you signed up with. But as so often happens when we finally decide to clean up our online accounts, some of them may be associated with outdated email or other accounts. In that case, there are a few alternatives listed by MySpace. The first one is to edit your profile and replace everything in your “About Me” box with “REMOVE PROFILE” and then contact MySpace and tell them to delete your profile (including your friend ID or URL). If that doesn’t work (say, if you can’t login to your account at all), you can just contact MySpace and ask them to delete the profile. How quickly they actually do so isn’t specified.

Official instructions for deleting your account can be found here.

LinkedIn

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Difficulty: 3

LinkedIn makes it quite easy to delete your account, once you know where to look. Click on “Settings” in the upper-right of the screen once you’re logged into your account, and then select “Close Your Account” under “Personal Information”. You’ll then be prompted for the reason you’re closing your account, and once confirmed, your account will be deleted.

As far as social networking sites go, LinkedIn probably has the most straight-forward account closure process. More details can be found here.

Google

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Difficulty: 3

Considering how pervasive Google is in our digital existence, you’d think deleting your Google account might be incredibly complicated. After all, many of us use dozens of Google services, and you’d think each one would require separate deletion.

For the most part, deleting your entire Google account is easy. There are only a few services that require special consideration. Of course, with the exception of a couple of services, there’s no way to delete individual services completely from your Google account. For example, with Analytics, you can delete each individual site you’re tracking, but not the Analytics account itself.

To delete your main Google account, login through the Google Accounts homepage. Then click on “Edit” next to “My Products”. From that page, you can delete certain services (Orkut and Web History), as well as delete your entire account by clicking on “Clear account and delete all services and info associated with it”. This will take you to a form where you’ll need to confirm each of the services you’ll be deleting. If you linked your Google account to an existing YouTube account, you’ll need to delete that account separately.

Then you’ll need to confirm your password, and check that you do, indeed, want to close your account, and that you know you’re still responsible for any pending financial transactions associated with your account. Then confirm, and your account will be deleted.

Certain services, including Google Alerts, Groups, and Docs, aren’t automatically deleted in this way. To unsubscribe from alerts, you’ll need to refer back to your original Alerts email (or from any Alerts email you’ve since received) and click the ‘unsubscribe’-link there. For Groups, you’ll also need to unsubscribe from each group.

Google Docs leaves shared documents and presentations available to collaborators and viewers. Spreadsheets, on the other hand, aren’t available to collaborators or viewers once you’ve deleted your account (so have a collaborator create a copy of the spreadsheet prior to deleting your account). With shared documents and presentations, you’ll want to reassign ownership to another user before deleting your account.

Full details on deleting your Google account can be found on the Google’s Help page “Deleting: Your Google Account”.

Ebay

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Difficulty: 3

Ebay makes it fairly easy to close your account, though they do impose a waiting period. All you need to do is make sure your account has a zero balance, and then click the link to request your account be closed on this page.

One caveat: if you think you might want to use your email address for another Ebay account in the future, make sure that you change it prior to deleting your account. Email addresses and user IDs cannot be reused in the future. Once the waiting period has ended, your account will be deleted and your feedback ratings and other information will no longer be visible. Whether that information is permanently deleted or stored on a server somewhere ad infinitum isn’t specified.

Wikipedia

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Difficulty: Impossible

Wikipedia is one of the few websites out there that doesn’t allow you to delete your account. That’s right, once you have a Wikipedia account, you have it forever. There is some hope, though, if you really don’t want to be associated with it any longer.

In most cases, accounts can be renamed and your user page can be deleted, along with (in some cases) your user talk pages. While this doesn’t erase your tracks entirely, it does effectively let you vanish from the site.

Wikipedia’s reasoning behind this is that all contributions have to be assigned to someone. They can’t have anonymous or orphaned contributions, or it would potentially ruin the crowdsourced and open nature of the site.

Flickr/Yahoo!

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Difficulty: 2

Deleting your account on Flickr is relatively easy. Once you’ve logged into your account, go to your account settings and click on the “Personal Information” tab. From there, click the link “Delete your Flickr account”. A warning screen will come up that informs you that the deletion is permanent, and that all of your photos and videos will be deleted.

Deleting your entire Yahoo! account is a separate step. Log into your account and then go to the account deletion page. This page explains what happens when you delete your account. User information is kept on Yahoo!’s active servers for 90 days after the deletion has been requested, and may persist in backups beyond that. Once you’ve read the information on the page, you have to enter your password, a captcha code and then confirm that you want to delete your account. One thing to remember: if you’ve signed up for any Yahoo! premium services, you may still be billed for those after your account has been terminated, so make sure you cancel those premium services before you delete your account.

Windows Live

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Difficulty: 2

Closing your Windows Live account is actually surprisingly easy. There’s only a problem if you’re using that account to access other websites. If so, you’ll need to go to each website where you’re using your Windows Live login credentials and delete your accounts there prior to deleting the Live account itself. If you don’t, you won’t be able to delete those accounts (or do anything with them) once your Live ID is deactivated.

Now, once you’ve verified that all your accounts linked to your Live ID have been closed, all you need to do is go to your Windows Live account and click on the “Close your account” link at the bottom under “Other Options”. This will bring up a page that tells you what happens when your account is closed. This includes that your registered information will be permanently deleted, that some information might not be deleted (refer to their privacy statement for details on that), and that if you have associated children’s accounts with that Live ID, they will also be deactivated. To finish the deletion process, you have to type in your password and click “Yes”.

There are reports that at this point you may be told there is a Microsoft email account associated with your account, and that your account cannot be closed. From there, you just need to click on “Close your Microsoft account” and then “Close my account”.

Stumbleupon

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Difficulty: 1

Stumbleupon is one of the easiest web services to delete your account from. Just go to their delete account page, enter your user ID/nickname and password, and click on “Delete Account”. That’s it! Account deletions are permanent, so make sure you really want to delete your account before clicking that “Delete Account” button.

WordPress.com

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Difficulty: Impossible

WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to delete your account. Instead, they recommend you simply leave the account inactive. If you’re worried about the information you’ve uploaded to your WordPress.com account, remember you can always delete the information contained in the account (or replace it with false information).

Start by deleting your blogs. To do that, go to Tools and then “Delete Site”. There’s an email confirmation step required. You may want to run an export of your site’s content first, just so you have a backup in case you ever want to repost or reuse any of it (or just for posterity). After that, you can replace your email address and other identifying information with alternative information. More information can be found on this page and this one.

Amazon

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Difficulty: 3

Closing your Amazon account requires you to contact their customer service department to request the account to be closed. This can only be done if you have no pending transactions, so make sure you’ve either received or cancelled all recent orders.

The email to customer service has to be sent from the email-address associated with your account. Other than that, they don’t give any indication of either how long it might take to delete the account or if there are additional confirmation steps involved.

YouTube

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Difficulty: 3

If your YouTube account was set up with your Google account login credentials (as in, you used your Google account to sign up for your YouTube account), it’s automatically deleted when you delete your Google account. But if you set it up separately from your Google account (or linked the accounts together after they were both set up, or if you want to keep your Google account), you’ll need to delete it separately. One thing to note is that deleting your account does not delete your videos or channel, just your profile information. You’ll need to delete those prior to deleting your account.

The deletion process is pretty straightforward, though it does have a few more steps than are really necessary. Log in to your account and then go to “Manage” from the drop-down menu under your user name. Then click on “Manage Account” and then “Delete Account”. It will then ask you why you want to delete your account. Fill that in and then click the “Delete Account” button. YouTube then brings up a window that reminds you that your videos will not be deleted, only your profile. If you’ve deleted your videos and channel (or opted not to), then click on “Delete Account” one more time. You then have to confirm one more time. After that, try logging into your account again to make sure it’s been deleted.

PayPal

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Difficulty: 1

Closing a PayPal account is pretty simple. Just log in to your account, and then click on your “Profile” link. From there, click on the “Close Account” link in the “Account Information” column. You’ll be prompted to continue from there and then you’ll need to click the “Close Account” button.

You’ll want to make sure your account is current and that there are no pending transactions, and of course you’ll want to transfer the positive balance to your bank account. There are reports that if you delete your PayPal account, it’s more difficult to get another one in the future (as in, they require more information of you). Whether this is true or not is unconfirmed.

Why’s It So Complicated?

In the case of every service mentioned above, properly deleting your account is a multi-step process. Some sites are even more difficult. It’s not a technical issue, obviously, as programming a functionality to let users delete their own accounts is something most competent developers could do before breakfast.

So why do some sites make it so complicated? The answer is user retention. They don’t want you to delete your account. The hope is that if you have the account, you’ll use it at least occasionally, if for no other reason than curiosity about things you might have missed when you weren’t logged in. As soon as you delete that account, though, it’s an out-of-site-out-of-mind kind of thing. You’re less likely to sign up for another account if you decided you could live without it once.

Account Deletion Remorse

This is one very valid reason to make it more complicated to delete an account: deletion remorse. It’s not uncommon for a user to have a bad day, get angry about something going on within a social network, and decide they’ve had enough and are getting rid of their account.

Of course, what often happens is that a day or two later they realize how much they loved using that social network, and they wish they could get their account back. With account deletion policies like those of Facebook (on which I’ve witnessed such account deletion remorse first-hand), users can just reactivate their account, and have all of their old friends and information right there. On sites with more immediate deletion policies, that user would likely have to start over entirely.

Should You Use Complicated Account Deletion Processes?

Considering how many major sites out there have complex methods for deleting accounts, should this be industry standard? Should all sites employ these methods to help retain users who can’t be bothered to follow a multi-step process? Probably not.

There are a few things to consider when deciding whether you want to make it complicated for a user to delete their account. First of all, if your deletion process is going to be handled by customer service representatives, do you have the manpower to do so? If you suddenly have a thousand members who want to delete their accounts, do you have the resources to handle that?

Do you expect users to regularly delete their accounts just to sign up for a new one a week later? If it’s complicated to delete their account, they may never sign up for another one, not wanting to go through the process again.

Inactive accounts can also eat up your system resources. Server space can become an issue, especially on very popular sites (or sites with very low budgets). Plus, it makes maintenance and backups more intensive, since there’s more data to deal with. Making it easier for people to delete their accounts if they’re not using your service can help relieve that load.

The level of complexity for the account deletion process is something that needs to be considered on a site-by-site basis. In general, the easier the process is, the better; however, it is important to make sure that users may be having a bad day and make a mistake by closing an account and so they will be happy about getting the account back a couple of days after it was closed.

Making the process way too difficult and time-consuming will turn annoyed customers in angry ones, the ones who will be very likely to spread negative word out there, while annoyed users would probably just close the account and move on, and even maybe come back to the service later. In either case, one way to minimize your worries about it, though, is to keep your users happy and conduct your site’s business in a transparent and open way.

(vf)

Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s also the author of The Smashing Idea Book: From Inspiration to Application.

  1. 101

    Emmitt Fickert

    November 6th, 2010 4:32 pm

    Excellent post, well written I must say.

    0
  2. 102

    Brett Widmann

    November 9th, 2010 6:39 pm

    This is really helpful and just what I needed. I don’t like when sites keep my information. Thanks for sharing.

    0
  3. 103

    Teresa Trinh

    November 12th, 2010 2:42 pm

    I have an emergency question here!
    I accidently bought or sold a item from eBay and I really want to cancel it! I already delete the PayPal account! On my ebay page it says I have “1 case” and that is the item that I accidently bought! I want to cancel the item that I bought! I also want to delete my eBay account but I’m really feel cautious that it might get suspended that I unpaid the item that I don’t want!

    Please Help me ASAP!

    0
  4. 104

    sammy

    November 13th, 2010 6:32 pm

    how can you permanently delete an aol account?

    +1
  5. 105

    Frank the Rabbit

    November 18th, 2010 8:48 pm

    For those of you that do not understand why you would want to delete your accounts on social networks and others, read this: http://www.encrypt-the-planet.com/optout.htm

    If you do not care about any of this, then don’t worry about anything. Just keep bumbling through life blindly. As they say… ignorance is bliss.

    +1
  6. 106

    Kevin

    November 29th, 2010 2:36 am

    How do I delete my account / profile from cnn.com?

    0
  7. 107

    Rick

    December 2nd, 2010 10:05 am

    I still love the websites that ask you if you are sure five times before they let you delete an account. I guess it is to prevent accidental deletions, but still funny that you have to confirm multiple times. For your further reading enjoyment, check out blog.realtimemanager

    0
  8. 108

    Anne

    December 5th, 2010 10:45 am

    Here’s another interesting tidbit, anyone, anywhere, can start up an account with your name on it without your permission and the site owners do not have to provide you with any information on the web address used to create a bogus account. Something to think about.

    0
  9. 109

    Marc

    December 6th, 2010 2:25 pm

    the easyest way to get rid of any account is to upload pictures of the muslim profit muhammad and repetadly give abuse to people you know will report you, hay presto your account will be disacctivated.

    0
  10. 110

    Mark Lester Iragana

    December 6th, 2010 4:42 pm

    A very informative and good content. I like it.

    0
  11. 111

    Indy

    December 8th, 2010 11:32 am

    Don’t forget Bloglines.com

    0
  12. 112

    lungten zangmo

    December 22nd, 2010 1:53 am

    please delete my facebook id

    0
  13. 113

    Justin

    February 4th, 2011 8:12 am

    Nice summary of account deletion procedures. For the SUPER lazy, there’s also this service called DeleteMe, http://www.abine.com/deleteme, which has people who will do it for you.

    0
  14. 114

    king

    February 6th, 2011 4:43 am

    how to delete an account on byond

    0
  15. 115

    debrah

    March 1st, 2011 1:27 am

    how to permanently delete myself on facebook

    +1
  16. 116

    Paulie

    March 19th, 2011 7:29 am

    Looking at Linkdin’s account deletion process, it states that after account closure you can contact customer service and your account will be reactivated.
    Does anyone know if they actually delete personal information permanently? It doesn’t say it anywhere…

    0
  17. 117

    Nicholas

    March 22nd, 2011 6:11 am

    Wikipedia is easy you just have to get banned. I don’t have an account with them anymore

    0
  18. 118

    Joseph

    April 13th, 2011 3:49 am

    For instructions to delete many more accounts, see
    http://www.accountkiller.com/

    I use this site to check if a site provides account removal *at all*. I’m always anxious to what happens with my personal data if I cannot even delete my account if I would like to… ICQ and Skype don’t allow deleting your profile at all, so your data just sits there forever.

    J.

    0
  19. 119

    John

    April 18th, 2011 10:43 pm

    The explanation for wikipedia is incorrect.

    Legally, wikipedia needs to have some name for every edit. The license all the writing is under requires this. You can have your user page deleted and your account renamed to a random set of numbers.

    “Wikipedia’s reasoning behind this is that all contributions have to be assigned to someone. They can’t have anonymous or orphaned contributions, or it would potentially ruin the crowdsourced and open nature of the site.” Wikipedia does have anonymous (with IP addresses recorder) and “orphaned” (from accounts renamed to random numbers) contributions and always has.

    0
  20. 120

    Epic Question

    April 26th, 2011 12:09 am

    How do I delete an account on CNN.COM? The website provides no info.

    0
  21. 121

    evnedastiera

    May 22nd, 2011 11:03 pm

    Hey guys first post! Cant wait to get to know everyone!!

    0
  22. 122

    ahyacinnethtrinho

    May 24th, 2011 9:23 am

    Cool stuff you got going on here!

    0
  23. 123

    daniel

    May 24th, 2011 6:39 pm

    to permanently delete facebook, begin by unfriending everybody and setting everything for “my eyes only.” If that doesn’t seem good enough, I think you could update your email address — use a new address created especially for the purpose. Then, change your facebook password to something impossible to remember. When it offers to send you a way in through your email, then also set your email password to something impossible to remember.

    +1
  24. 124

    rich

    June 1st, 2011 10:38 am

    You should do a post on deleting accounts from dating sites next. I met my fiance on a dating site three years ago and we both had a heck of a time deleting our account(s) and getting rid of the subsequent suitors and stalkers that remained.

    +1
  25. 125

    Keito

    June 21st, 2011 4:23 am

    is there any possibility that an account in facebook would get deleted due to pornographic photos and videos?

    0
  26. 126

    Lucy

    June 23rd, 2011 5:49 am

    I would really like you to mention thestudentroom on this because this is another site where they will never allow you to delete your account. I can understand the Wiki reasons butit really seems that TSR are doing it just to seem much more popular that it actually is

    0
  27. 127

    Asoka

    July 10th, 2011 4:48 am

    This is greatly helpful for novices to dump unwanted sites. The naughtiest sites are in dating business. Some of them do not have any option to even change the password. Some allow you to ‘hide’ your profile but do not allow ‘deletion’ of the profile. Suggest you write about those as well.

    0
  28. 128

    mbk

    July 20th, 2011 6:26 pm

    A very helpful and well written article :)

    +1
  29. 129

    Karate Sherwood Park

    July 31st, 2011 7:36 pm

    Thanks on your marvelous posting! I really enjoyed reading it, you may be a great author.I will be sure to bookmark your blog and definitely will come back sometime soon. I want to encourage continue your great posts, have a nice afternoon!

    0
  30. 130

    Steve Evans

    August 7th, 2011 2:11 am

    First, I found the information in you post useful. But, then I read the comments and discovered a whole range of account deletion issues. I think that this post and the comments should be made compulsory reading for all those in charge of web sites like MySpace, and Facebook, and the maybe there would be a lot less frustration for users.

    0
  31. 131

    bernie

    August 8th, 2011 10:58 am

    how about deleting craigslist posts?

    0
  32. 132

    Samantha

    August 19th, 2011 5:02 am

    Not only is there the problem of deleting accounts, but also deleting the links to your account. I’ve lost track of the number of friends who delete an account to something and then come back a month later with a completely different email or username, but all the links on their forum signatures / portfolio sites still lead to their old account (which is now deleted) as they haven’t updated it. That’s why I used Socially@, the online business card for social networks. If I get a new account for something, I just put the link into my Socially@ homepage and it updates it on all my sites / blog posts / etc. I’m slowly converting my friends to it too, which will hopefully solve the VERY annoying issue of trying to keep track of all my friends’ accounts, and what social networks they are / aren’t a part of.

    0
  33. 133

    Imogen

    August 29th, 2011 12:06 pm

    Hey i closed my g-mail account and i didn’t know my youtube was linked when i done this.. is there anyway to get it back?! and also ive e-mailed youtube does anyone know how long it will take for them to get back to me?

    Thanks.

    +1
  34. 134

    edeltraut

    August 29th, 2011 12:47 pm

    nice article! but the easiest way to DELETE your facebook account permanently (and backup ALL yor data) is http://www.goodfbye.com

    2 clicks and you’re done!
    ;-)

    0
  35. 135

    mayank

    September 3rd, 2011 8:47 pm

    delet my facebook account

    0
  36. 136

    joe

    September 9th, 2011 7:16 am

    Cameron,
    Thanks for the info. I want to delete my YouTube account (which is linked to Google) but when I do through the procedures, and click on Manage Account, it does not give me the option to delete (or close) account. What is the problem?
    Could you send your reply to my e-mail as well. I am wasting so much time trying to get rid of the YouTube Account. Thanks!

    Article was great and much needed.

    Joe

    +1
  37. 137

    dawinder

    September 13th, 2011 6:39 am

    hi,i want delete my similac account permanently.please tell me how can i delete it.?

    0
  38. 138

    Laurence Nilson

    September 15th, 2011 12:35 am

    I personally thouroughly liked this point bit.ly it was a valuable decent see thank you

    0
  39. 139

    Edward Elric

    September 17th, 2011 1:14 am

    I’m bookmarking this. Knowing how to delete my accounts on those websites will no doubt be one day useful. Thanks!

    0
  40. 140

    Vickie

    September 17th, 2011 11:40 am

    The instructions in this article are easy to understand and will be a huge help in my efforts to get rid of so much stuff I don’t use anymore. Thanks.

    0
  41. 141

    Hakim

    October 3rd, 2011 6:25 pm

    Hello,

    I deleted my LinkedIn account over a Month ago, but every time i google my name, that account shows up. I would like it to disappear. Can anyone please guide me through this process.

    Thanks.

    0
  42. 142

    Grant

    October 5th, 2011 7:27 pm

    @Hakim

    Try this,

    Remove a page or site from Google’s search results
    http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=164734

    Remove a “Cached” page
    http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1091779

    +1
  43. 143

    Frances Murphy

    October 6th, 2011 12:52 pm

    hello my name is frances murphy i wish i would of found this site sooner before third party sites messed up my life through social netwroking media crooks but im glad i did now . i only used it to download ringtones and stuff and also keep in touch with family and adult entertainment sites got me and my family friends teachers in a whole lot of trouble adult porn shouldnt bee on line and neither should acess to peoples personal info from 192.com they are the real badies and scam artists who end up ahssling hard working people . thanks this is very usefull i will share this site with my friends and family aswell . now lets see someone steel my id post it on tthird party sites im disabeld you knwo it taking advantage of some0ne vunerable period

    0
  44. 144

    Mark May

    October 11th, 2011 2:58 pm

    How do you delete a facebook account without having everyone know you have deleted it?

    Aarg,

    0
    • 145

      mattbellamy_

      November 5th, 2011 8:43 am

      That would be very hard since people will notice you’ve gone if you’re popular on it.

      0
  45. 146

    Katja

    October 12th, 2011 4:08 am

    HI, I am trying to close my hotmail account and and my windows live. Have tried your steps, but when it comes to close your microsoft account it tells me: This option isn’t available for your account…

    Tried going into linked ID’ but there is no linked ID’s that I can delete…. this is really frustrating me by now… will my accounts be deleted automatically after some time when I don’t go into them for a while? Even if I have pictures on them? (which I can’t seem to delete either)

    Thanks for your help, Katja

    0
  46. 147

    sonny

    October 22nd, 2011 6:00 am

    I am Tring to deleate completely out of yearbook how do i do this.

    0
  47. 148

    jhjuisha

    October 28th, 2011 1:52 am

    # 1

    Open your Web browser and navigate to the account deletion page on the Yahoo! website. Log in with your username and password.
    # 2

    Verify that the user ID at the top of the page is correct and review the information on the page below, which explains how to end certain……

    Read More click: http://www.techyv.com/questions/how-permanently-delete-your-account-popular-websites#comment-35172

    -1
  48. 149

    mattbellamy_

    November 5th, 2011 8:42 am

    You forgot Bebo =P
    I stumble upon this as I was trying to find out ‘How do you delete friends after they’ve closed their account on YouTube’. I guess you can’t. Same about Wikipedia though, I wish to delete it. And I know – same about Facebook too.

    0
  49. 150

    kaite

    November 12th, 2011 10:53 am

    Ive Deleted My Fb Account. Fb was taking over my life i had lost all my friends due too fb and actually became depressed becuse of fb my own parents had me de friended. i looked and realized this was bad for me and my health i have been off fb for 2 months now ive made new friends i have a bf and im currently off medication for depresssion. this may sound fake but belive it or not facebook almost ruined my life.

    +3
  50. 151

    Sarah Jones

    November 13th, 2011 5:34 am

    its really professional…. :-) thums up :)

    0
  51. 152

    Mitch Williams

    November 13th, 2011 9:35 am

    Thank you for a great and necessary artical. Also,thank you so much for not putting one of those hideuos social networking widgetts on your site. I especially hate it when it floats over content.

    0
  52. 153

    rounak

    November 17th, 2011 4:56 am

    want to delete facebook account permenantly

    0
  53. 154

    big mistake

    November 17th, 2011 9:48 pm

    i deleted my account in skillpages due to vital information i should have not posted..but each time i search my name in google, it still shows in the result with the link..i want to know if it will be there permanently or will it fall out of the search result eventually..for how long..

    0
  54. 155

    shoaib

    December 2nd, 2011 7:32 am

    thanx 4 helpng me

    0
  55. 156

    mkay mkay

    December 12th, 2011 3:36 pm

    informative…anyone hear about a new social network called inspYte? i never have but apparently i get pulled up in a web search for my name like i have an account but i don’t. if i click on the link it redirects me to peoplemix.net where it says my name and town and that i’m using this social media, yet it asks me to sign up. problem i have since it appears (and i don’t) i really don’t have an account with them is how i even got associated on a search engine and how do i get off of it? there isn’t a number on the site and they’re so new there isn’t much info out there. can i report them (there is an address on the site) for privacy abuse? if so to who?

    0
  56. 157

    Majuba

    December 18th, 2011 3:11 pm

    Very useful information, thank you very much.

    0
  57. 158

    Bobbie

    December 28th, 2011 10:10 pm

    I have run across at least 5 sites where I cannot delete the account through any means because they refuse to give contact information. Do you know if this is truly legal? This is one of the sites that has done this. Read here: blog.chipin.com/contact/

    It cannot be legal to hijack all control over closing an account that one has created by joining a website.

    0
  58. 159

    Margot Walton

    January 3rd, 2012 2:10 am

    I have just created a kik acount which I regret and I want to delete it but how??

    0
  59. 160

    James Steve Faircloth

    January 20th, 2012 6:24 pm

    Want to permanently/delete my account from linkin. Reasons retired, not looking for employment.
    Don’t like linkin, it has been a headache to me!!!!!!!!!

    0

  1. 1

    kaite

    November 12th, 2011 10:53 am

    Ive Deleted My Fb Account. Fb was taking over my life i had lost all my friends due too fb and actually became depressed becuse of fb my own parents had me de friended. i looked and realized this was bad for me and my health i have been off fb for 2 months now ive made new friends i have a bf and im currently off medication for depresssion. this may sound fake but belive it or not facebook almost ruined my life.

    +3
  2. 2

    DesignFellow

    June 11th, 2010 5:07 am

    Thanks for the info..
    Very Useful.. :-)
    Keep up…

    +3
  3. 3

    Jillacious

    June 16th, 2010 8:46 pm

    I don’t know how I did it, because according to this article it should pretty hard, but I deleted my MySpace account about 6 months ago. Then, I stumbled this, got paranoid, tried to log in to my old deleted MySpace account, and it’s still gone. So, I must have done something right.

    +2
  4. 4

    Johann

    June 19th, 2010 2:20 pm

    Actually, this is not exactly true:

    * There is a grace period of 14 days before your account is deleted permanently
    * Whenever you login directly on the website, Facebook will warn you you’re still in that grace period an either lets you cancel the deletion request *or* still perform the deletion process
    * Logging in from third party services, even the iPhone app, doesn’t in any way interrupt the process, so you don’t have to get paranoid on absolutely, never, ever logging in again.
    * After 14 days, everything’s gone. You can reregister the same e-Mail, even the Facebook-nickname (facebook.com/) will again be available

    Why I know? Well, I just started the deletion 14 days ago. Now, everything’s gone and I have a new, empty Facebook account. :)

    +2
  5. 5

    Tristan

    June 13th, 2010 2:14 pm

    if you want to delete any of your accounts, all you gotta do is just post some porn or something up. THEY will delete it for you. I remember a while back i posted a post on myspace about how myspace sucks, and 2 days later my acct was deleted lol.

    +2
  6. 6

    Omnom

    June 11th, 2010 7:21 am

    For CalorieCount, which is a sub-part of about.com, you have to e-mail them asking to delete it. I felt stupid for not being able to find something so simple as account deletion so I looked for something that wasn’t there for quite a while.

    +2
  7. 7

    John M. Carr

    September 30th, 2010 10:36 am

    @Darren Williams: Actually, it has been done. I will refer you to an article on CNN.com

    http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-22/health/twitter.locked.in_1_twitter-brain-activity-messages?_s=PM:HEALTH

    +2
  8. 8

    Aljan Scholtens

    June 11th, 2010 5:40 am

    Thanks for the article, good reminder! I will integrate it soon on focussion.com and I will make it easy, because I would want that too.

    +1
  9. 9

    Shekhar Sahu @WhiteHatAndroid

    June 11th, 2010 11:09 am

    Hey sister you made it so complicated. Try suicidemachine.org, it will do everything for you :))

    +1
  10. 10

    Jooleeo

    June 11th, 2010 12:19 pm

    “but unofficial reports say 14 days. To be on the safe side, you may want to wait a month or more before attempting to login to confirm your account has been deleted.”

    So if you want it gone, just never try to login again after fill the Cancelation Form, its safe that way, you can ask a friend to look for you a month later to be sure.

    +1
  11. 11

    Floris

    June 12th, 2010 1:13 am

    Bookmarked. Because I have friends and family that don’t see the value in social networking.

    +1
  12. 12

    Deborah

    June 11th, 2010 5:37 am

    Brilliant issue to talk about! You’ve great research and shared really good guidelines. Thanks for doing this. Sometimes, you just need to start over. Early on, social networks were manageable — now they seem full of spammers and hawkers. Few people are actually engaged or interested in ‘networking.’

    I’m going to pass this along.

    +1
  13. 13

    Justin Seidl

    June 11th, 2010 5:41 am

    This article was very interesting. It makes you second guess your privacy and personal safety knowing some information can never be truely erased from the internet.

    +1
  14. 14

    Ted Goas

    June 11th, 2010 5:57 am

    I gotta say… interesting topic!

    +1
  15. 15

    DefunktOne

    June 11th, 2010 7:51 am

    Myspace was a serious pain in the arse 5 years ago. I had to send an image of myself with my id # to get the account removed. It was a bloody joke!

    +1
  16. 16

    matt

    June 11th, 2010 8:11 am

    facebook knows every page you’re referenced on though. As a programmer I can assure you it’s not near as hard as you’re making it out to be.

    +1
  17. 17

    Joe Barstow

    June 11th, 2010 8:30 am

    http://www.colourlovers.com has a great utility for deleting a user account. In your account settings, a discreet message down at the bottom of the page simply states you can delete your account whenever you feel like it.

    In my opinion the worst experiences are the ones you have to CALL the websites customer service and listen to them try to up-sell you on new services or discounts before you can cancel it. This perpetuates the idea that you can get whatever you want out of a company by threatening to leave. Bad business model imho.

    +1
  18. 18

    JW

    June 11th, 2010 10:06 am

    You can add constraints to table ‘picturetags’ that if the record in table ‘users’ for user id ’123456789′ is deleted, then also delete all those records where the ‘user’ field in the ‘picturetags’ table.

    It is done in mySQL, for example, by declaring foreign keys with the syntax “ON DELETE CASCADE”.

    See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-foreign-key-constraints.html

    +1
  19. 19

    Cameron Chapman

    June 11th, 2010 12:34 pm

    Sorry that wasn’t clear in the original post. It’s now been updated to reflect the proper meaning. Basically, if your YouTube account was set up with your Google account (using your Google login rather than setting up a separate account), it can be deleted right along with your Google account. If you set up your YouTube account separately from your Google account, or even if you linked them together after each was set up, then you’ll need to delete each one separately. Hope that clarifies things!

    +1
  20. 20

    MegaFill

    June 11th, 2010 2:02 pm

    You know vkontakte.com ? Its russian social… Like facebook. And there delete ur accaunt is impossible! They work with Russian FBI… And you cant cheange your real name! You must send SMS from your real phone number…

    +1
  21. 21

    StumbleUpon

    June 11th, 2010 2:58 pm

    On StumbleUpon, you can schedule your account for deletion, and from that moment on you have 14 days to change your mind. After 14 days, the account is completely deleted. Within the 14 days, you can go back and undo the account deletion. This is how we handle “account deletion remorse”. Hope this helped!

    +1
  22. 22

    kosso

    June 11th, 2010 6:42 pm

    Really great article. Thanks for this.

    I’m having to go through the process of figuring out how to go about this for the system I have built.

    It’s a forum/conversation-style system, so if someone deletes their account, it will break the ‘threads’ of various conversations they once participated in.

    I’ll be doing something like replacing their posts with ‘this user no longer exists’ type posts and deleting the actual content they created or shared. Trouble is, is that the replies will often reference them through video/audio etc. no way of getting around that.

    It’s really not as easy as some people think to delete an account on the system side, when their account ids etc are used as foreign keys in so many places around a database – especially in places like Facebook etc.

    +1
  23. 23

    Nigel McNie

    June 12th, 2010 12:29 am

    I’ve previously blogged about user account deletion. I don’t think the reason it’s hard is to retain users. It’s far more likely to be that the architecture of the underlying system has made it hard, combined with no real motivation to make it easy (as opposed to actively opposing it).

    Sites that do tend to make it easy probably do so because deletion requests are soaking up support time.

    Anyway, you can read more of my thoughts about it, including my proposed solution, here: http://nigel.mcnie.name/blog/how-to-delete-user-accounts-properly-the-disassociation-method

    +1
  24. 24

    Matt Berridge

    June 12th, 2010 2:33 am

    Windows Live…difficulty: impossible!

    No matter what, when you close your accounts down they are ‘held’ for 270 days after closure in case you ‘change your mind’. 270 days?! How stupid is that!

    So you can be phished again in this time and once logged back in, your account gets reactivated!

    I have been trying to close mine down for months after being phished (I have changed my password numerous times) yet all my contacts are STILL receiving loads of spam emails due to the above happening.

    Their support team are useless as well. Very annoying. I simply CANNOT close my account.

    +1
  25. 25

    MacSmiley

    June 12th, 2010 11:08 am

    Not quite sure I understand your reasoning. If you no longer have an account, your non-existent account can no longer be hacked into.

    Right?

    +1
  26. 26

    SpecialEd

    June 12th, 2010 11:19 am

    Just put things on your profiles to get banned. Even get someone to report a post or picture. Then let the hosts know your profiles been hacked. Request them to delete it.

    +1
  27. 27

    MacSmiley

    June 12th, 2010 11:28 am

    This is true, but a blank placeholder icon takes the place of your buddy icon and any images used in your comments go bye-bye.

    I have been told that it is possible to export all your data, including comments, from Flickr using the API, though.

    +1
  28. 28

    CDulany

    June 14th, 2010 6:28 am

    Facebook blocked that site back in May for breaking the SRR. So it looks like we still have to do it the ‘hard way’.

    +1
  29. 29

    Jon

    July 10th, 2010 7:02 pm

    “Out of site, out of mind”

    Either a rookie typo, or a kinda clever pun. :)

    +1
  30. 30

    DeleteMe

    July 1st, 2010 6:34 am

    Great instructions! If you don’t want to deal with all that, though, there are other options. For example, you can pay a few bucks to have a company like us (getabine.com/deleteme) handle everything for you.

    +1

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