How to delete your Facebook and Instagram accounts — or, at least, lock

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A growing number of people are talking about deleting their Facebook accounts after all the company’s scandals.
Here’s how to delete your Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounts, thus wiping your data from the Facebook empire entirely.
And if you can’t or don’t want to leave Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp wholesale, we’ve pulled together advice on how to reduce the amount of data it collects about you.

Facebook has had a bad year.

From successive privacy scandals, to outrage over the social network’s role in spreading hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar, the negative headlines about Facebook have been relentless. And that’s not to mention the backlash to a possible Instagram redesign that would replace the traditional vertical feed with a horizontal one, which Facebook mistakenly rolled out to some users on Thursday morning.

Combined with growing awareness of tech addiction and “digital well-being,” some people are taking the decision to disconnect from Facebook and its family of apps entirely, or radically cut back on their usage.

So if you’re mulling over deleting your account on Facebook and its associated apps for your new year’s resolution, Business Insider has compiled a guide on exactly how you do it.

And if you can’t bear to entirely leave the house that Mark Zuckerberg built, but want to cut down what data you’re sharing with the company, here’s how you do that too.

First up: Deleting Facebook.

Compared to locking your accounts down, deleting your Facebook is fairly straightforward.

Log into Facebook on a desktop web browser, the click on the small arrow in the top-right corner and click on settings. From there, navigate to “Your Facebook Information” on the right-hand side, and one of the options that appears will be “Delete Your Account and Information.” Click “View.”

Don’t forget to download data you’d like to keep before you go.

It’ll then take you to a page that tries to guilt-trip you into staying, suggesting you temporarily deactivate your account instead.

It offers you a link to download all of your photos and information, which is a good idea if you have pictures and memories on Facebook that you’d like to keep. (If you want to download all your content without deleting your account, you can do this too: The “Your Facebook Information” page offers a direct link to do that.)

You can also download others users photos by navigating to the ones you want, and hovering the mouse over the image. An button in the bottom right then appears called “Options.” Click it, and one of the options is “Download.” Unfortunately you can’t batch-download other users’ photos: You have to do this one-by-one.

Once you’ve saved everything you need from Facebook, click the “Delete Account” button on the “Permanently Delete Account” page then enter your password when prompted to set it in motion.

You’ll still have to wait a month before your account is completely deleted, however: Facebook forces users to wait in case they change their minds and want to reactivate their account later.

And here’s how to wave goodbye to Instagram (and save your photos).

There’s no way to delete your Instagram account from the mobile app. Instead, you’ll need to log in via a desktop browser and navigate to the “Delete Your Account” page. There, it’ll force you to say why you’re deleting your account (“Privacy concerns,” “Too many ads,” and “Trouble getting started” are some of the options), then suggest things you can do rather than delete.

Push through and it’ll prompt you to re-enter your password; do that, and it’s done.

Again, you’ll want to make sure to download your photos and data before you go, if you want to keep it. On desktop, navigate to your profile and click the cog button for settings. Then select “Privacy & Security,” then “Data Download.”

It’ll prompt you to enter an email address it’ll send it all too, and ask for your password. There are instructions on how to do this via the mobile app available here.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider