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One scandal after another. The succession of headlines on the vulnerability of Facebook, the use of personal data of its users for its own benefit or the case of Cambridge Analytica have caused in recent months a mass exodus in the social network. Thus, more and more people are interested in deleting their Facebook account .

But what steps must be followed to eliminate it? Before doing any type of management, the first thing is to consider what I lose when deleting the account. In this sense, Facebook will offer throughout the elimination process the possibility of downloading all your account data , but there are other risks.

For example, it is possible to lose access to accounts created in applications or websites from the personal Facebook account. In order not to lose it, it is essential to change the login mode in each of these services, removing access through the social network to change it by access through email.

Once this previous step is done, we can proceed to delete the Facebook account. To do this you have to go to the tab located to the right of the whole in the top menu . Clicking on it will display several options, including the one that must be selected to delete the account: Settings .

When you click, a large menu will appear with numerous options. To continue with the account deletion process, you must go to the third section of the menu, Your Facebook information . Once the options in this section are displayed, we are interested in the last point: Deactivation and elimination .

In Deactivation and elimination, Facebook offers two alternatives: Deactivate the account, temporary and reversible decision , or Eliminate permanently, an option that has no reverse . The first option may be a good intermediate step of definitive account removal. With the deactivation, we can see to which accounts of external websites and applications we have lost access.

After selecting Delete permanently, Facebook offers us the aforementioned alternative to download personal information. By selecting this option, Facebook compiles a file with all available data that can be downloaded . This file will contain publications, photos and videos, comments, private messages or the list of friends, among other information. If you do not want to download any information, it is best to click Remove account .

Now there are only a couple of steps to delete the Facebook account: the first is to enter the password to confirm that the account corresponds to the user who tries to delete it and confirm, in a last frame, the final deletion.

Despite this, there is a period of 30 days to reconsider the decision . Once the account has been deleted, a new text box will appear explaining that if during this period of time the session is re-logged in, it is possible to reverse the account deletion.

If privacy is one of the aspects that most motivate the deletion of the Facebook account, there are other actions to prevent Mark Zuckerberg's company from tracking users' activity online. Thus, it is advisable to delete cookies , an action that will also prevent other websites from having private information of the users of the social network.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Facebook
  • Internet
  • Mark Zuckerberg
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  • Social networks

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