Accessible in 37 different languages worldwide and used by more than a billion users, Facebook is one of the most used social networking sites in the current times. This section, therefore, deals with the details of it- starting from how it was formed, its key features, to how to deactivate Facebook account and how to delete a profile.
What is Facebook?
Facebook is one of the most popular free social networking sites that helps connect the whole world together. It allows people from even the remotest of places to connect with their friends and family online, by exchanging messages as well as video chatting. In this site, people can share content in the form of videos, pictures or texts and others can like, share and comment on the same. There are also various online games such as Candy Crush, Farmville, Ludo and others that the users can play.
Besides this, it has also made a huge profile to all the businessmen who run their business by selling ads on the platform. Sellers and buyers have also found it a common platform to come together and exchanges product and services.
How was Facebook formed?
In today’s time, what is one of the most successful companies Facebook was formed as a small idea by Mack Zuckerberg and Edward Saverin and some other group of Harvard students back on February 4, 2004. The main aim of these students was to create a social platform to connect all the students of Harvard University, which they were students of. What began as a small initiative called ‘Face Mash’ spread rapidly as ‘Facebook’. It was in 2006 that it spread swiftly enough to wash of MySpace.
As per the statistics conducted in the year 2012, Facebook has crossed one billion users worldwide making it one of the largest social networking platforms in the world.
What are some features of Facebook?
One of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook has a large number of features that distinguishes and keeps it ahead of others. To mention a few of them are:
- Formation of Groups: Facebook allows creation of groups. In these groups, people who share a common liking for a certain product or service can come together and share their thoughts about the same. It is up to a user whether they want to do not want to be a part of it.
- Watch Party: This unique feature on Facebook allows to have various streaming videos for the members of the group to view, like and comment on.
- Live Streaming: This feature of Facebook has enabled the users to connect with their fans, customers to a more personalized level by streaming live and conversing with them. This has therefore helped uplift many businesses.
What are the differences between deleting and deactivating the Facebook Profile?
The section below deals with helping the users understand how to deactivate Facebook account and how to delete the same. But before doing so, it is important to clearly understand the differences between the two.
Although both of these ensure that the profile does not remain visible to others on Facebook, both of these have a major difference between them. The difference is permanency. To elaborate, deactivating the Facebook profile by the user gives them a chance to come back and reactivate their profile as and when they want to.
Here are the key features of deactivating a Facebook profile:
- The user can reactivate their profile as and when they want to.
- Facebook saves the user information of the deactivated profile.
- Other users cannot search for or see the deactivated account.
- Some information, such as the messages exchanged by the user with might remain visible.
- Even if the account gets deactivated, the user can keep using the ‘Messenger’.
However, deleting the profile on Facebook is more of a serious decision since it is irreversible. Once the account of the user is deleted, the user loses all access to it.
Here are the key features of deleting a Facebook profile:
- The user loses all access to the profile once it gets deleted.
- The users cannot access ‘Messenger’.
- Facebook does not save the data of the user profile. Therefore, before deleting the profile, the user must save the information if they want to.
- It takes up to 90 days to delete the data of the profile from the backup system.
- Certain information such as the messages exchanged by the user might still be accessible by the users they have been in contact with.
- Other apps that are linked to Facebook like Pinterest or any other games like PUBG or Ludo will automatically log out.
- The request for deleting the profile is retained by Facebook for a few days. If the user logs in to their account during this time period, the request for deleting their account gets cancelled.
How to Deactivate Facebook Profile?
Often some people feel or want to deactivate their Facebook profile for a few days and reactivate it later. This gives them all a chance to take a break from the social site and also saves them the horror of deactivating the account or going offline completely. But most people do not know how to deactivate Facebook account.
Deactivating the profile on Facebook is extremely easy and could be done in certain steps. Here are the steps on how to deactivate Facebook account:
- Find and click on the inverted triangle present at the top right corner of the Facebook page. This is the Account menu.
- From the drop down menu, find and click on ‘Settings’.
- Find and click on ‘General’ from the left column.
- Find and click on ‘Manage your Account’.
- Click on ‘Deactivate your Account’.
- Once Step 5 is done, Facebook will confirm the identity of the individual with certain follow up questions. These include the password of the user.
- Once Facebook ensures that the user is authentic, it will ask for a reason to deactivate the account.
- Once done, the Facebook account will get temporarily deactivated.
The above steps on how to deactivate Facebook account ensures that the account of the user gets deactivate for the time period they wish to keep it offline. It depends on the user as and when they want to reactivate their account.
How to deactivate Facebook Account in Mobile?
Facebook is mostly surfed from mobile. In case a user wants to deactivate their Facebook account, they can do so directly from their mobile phones and need not access it through their laptops or PCs.
Here are the steps to deactivate the Facebook account in mobile:
- Open the Facebook app on your mobile phone.
- Go to the top right corner of the Facebook profile, search and tap on the three lines.
- Scroll down. Find and Click on ‘Settings’.
- Scroll Down. Search and tap on ‘Your Facebook Information’,
- Click on ‘Account ownership and control’.
- Tap on ‘Deactivation and Deletion’.
- Click on ‘Deactivate Account’.
- Click on ‘Continue to Account Deactivation’.
How to Reactivate Facebook Account?
The steps on how to reactivate Facebook account of the user are extremely easy. The user can log in to their profiles with their user name and password as and when they want to. Their whole profile will be reactivated just the way it was deactivated.
However, what the user must remember is their Facebook Id and password. If the user fails to remember their password, they must click on ‘Forgot Password’ and request a new password. In that case, Facebook will send a link to set up the new password to the associated account of the user.
How to Delete Facebook Account?
At other times, there are people who come up with a decision to completely delete their Facebook account. This decision is irreversible as once the account is deleted, one cannot go back and reactivate it. Deleting the account washes away all the information of the user that they cannot retain back.
In cases where one wants to permanently delete their Facebook account, the above steps on how to deactivate Facebook account would not suffice. This is for the reason that it merely temporarily deactivates the account.
However, unlike the complicated steps on how to deactivate Facebook account, the step required to delete the account is simpler and the user does not need to follow a series of steps to do so. Rather, the Facebook profile of the user can be deleted permanently by just clicking on the link.
However, the user must understand that the data of the user account will be washed off forever and it cannot be retained. Thus, the user before taking the irreversible decision of deleting their account permanently must make sure that they have taken the necessary steps for retaining their data.
Steps to follow to retain the data of the user before finally deleting the account:
- Log in to the account using the user Id and password.
- Click on the link to delete the account. This is Facebook’s help page on how to delete the Facebook account.
- Find and click on the Account menu. It is the inverted triangle present at the top right corner of the Facebook page.
- Search for and click on ‘General Account Settings.
- Click on ‘Download a copy of your Facebook data’.
- Click on ‘Start my Archive’.
Once these steps are followed, the user can ensure that the data of their profile are archived and can go on with deleting their profile without any worries. A file that contains all the data of the Facebook profile of the user will get downloaded. The user can keep the file as and where they want to.
How to cancel deleting a Facebook Account?
Now that the users are aware of how to delete a Facebook account, there are often times when they want to undo their decision. In those cases, although deleting the Facebook account is irreversible, Facebook still provides a grace time to the users in case they want to change their decision.
If in less than a period of 30 days, the users wish to reactivate the account they have deleted, the can retain their account back. However, if they have crossed the period of 30 days, it is unlikely of them to have access to their account again. This is because it takes Facebook a period of 30 days to delete the profile.
Here are the steps to cancel the deletion of the account of the user:
- Step 1: The user needs to log in to the Facebook account using the ID and password. This needs to be done within 30days of deleting the account.
- Step 2: Click on ‘Cancel Deletion’.
It is up to 90 days that Facebook takes to delete all the posts that the user has posted throughout the time they were on Facebook. However, this information can not be accessed by any other user on Facebook. Even after that, Facebook retains certain pieces of information with them for security purposes.
Final thoughts
Facebook is undoubtedly one of the most used and viral social networking sites in current times. One would find almost everyone starting from kids to the oldies having a Facebook account in today’s world. However, as easy as creating a Facebook account sounds and is, many users are unaware of how to deactivate Facebook account or delete the same. As a result, there are many profiles that remain unused as the users just abruptly stop accessing the same. The above section, therefore, focuses on the users who do not wish to continue using their profile.
Deactivating or deleting the Facebook profile when a person does not wish to continue to access the account any more is the safest way to ensure that the information of the user is safe.