What's the difference between deactivating and deleting my account?
You can deactivate or delete your account at any time.
You may deactivate your account for any number of temporary reasons. This option gives you the flexibility to leave and come back whenever you want. If you deactivate your account:
- People won’t be able to see the information on your Timeline on Facebook.
- People on Facebook will not be able to search for you.
- Some information, like messages you sent, may still be visible to others.
- We save the information in your account (ex: friends, photos, interests), just in case you want to come back to Facebook at some point. If you choose to reactivate your account, the information on your profile will be there when you come back.
If you permanently delete your account:
- You will not be able to regain access to your account.
- Some of the things you do on Facebook aren’t stored in your account. For example, a friend may still have messages from you even after you delete your account. That information remains after you delete your account.
- It may take up to 90 days to delete all of the things you've posted, like your photos, status updates or other data stored in backup systems. While we are deleting this information, it is inaccessible to other people using Facebook.
- Copies of some material (ex: log records) may remain in our database for technical reasons. When you delete your account, this material is disassociated from any personal identifiers.