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Comment by nathanyz | Hacker News Reader

Is this now perhaps the easiest way to remove your Facebook account?

Future guides will be like:

  1) Buy an Apple device
  2) Download and sign in to Facebook app
  3) Click delete account button

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Deleting a FB account is already trivial.

Instructions here (essentially, press "Permanently Delete Account" in settings and put in your password to confirm): https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674

I am under the impression this varies wildly from country to conutry but am unsure - maybe someone else can chime in to confirm/deny?

huh? you can deactivate and delete your FB account through Facebook...why would this be easier?

Don't they maintain shadow accounts and not actually delete the account in the background. That was my understanding from prior discussions around it. Basically they hide the account, not actually delete the account and all data associated with your use.

Could be totally wrong here though...

They absolutely delete the account and data associated with it, however the shadow accounts thing is... separate. Their line of reasoning is: well, I uploaded your phone number, so it's "my" data and not "yours", so "you" can't delete it...

There's no reason Facebook will delete your account as opposed to soft-deleting it, or maybe will "comply" by literally deleting your username & password but keeping the rest of the data. It's Facebook after all.

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