What Happens to User Data When a Facebook Account Is Deleted?

However, the recent news of Facebook’s data siphoning seems to have rocked the world, proving that some people are still unaware of this issue as many rush to delete their accounts in protest or pure rage against the deceptive company. But what they don’t know is that deleting an account doesn’t magically wipe all the data that has been gathered over years of daily activity. Instead, it’s a long, sluggish process in which Facebook still comes out on top in the end.

Deactivating an account

The revelation of Cambridge Analytica divided the billions of Facebook users into different groups. There are those who simply don’t care about the news and continue using the website as before, others who now hate the company but still use the service, and then the rest who immediately explored the settings in the hopes of deleting their accounts to reclaim the little privacy they still have left.

So how can you quit Facebook? There are two distinct ways of doing this – or trying to at least. The first one is through deactivation, something that the social network will happily highlight doesn’t actually delete anything. All the data associated to any given account will remain untouched – such as pictures, friends and interests – despite the fact that other people will be unable to search for or see the deactivated profile listed in their friends list. This is intentional, as if users change their minds and want to reactivate the account, then everything is easily restored. During the period of inactivity this information is still available to Facebook.

Deleting an account

However, some information will always remain, such as messages sent to friends using the mistrustful Messenger, for instance, as this is not stored in user accounts. Also, copies of some materials like log records will remain in databases, too, although according to Facebook these are “disassociated from personal identifiers”. The best that Facebook allows for deleting the activity log history is to let users remove each action listed in their log.

But there’s yet another trick up the company’s sleeve…

Linked apps

As a multimillion dollar corporation, Facebook owns and actively purchases other services, including WhatsApp and Instagram. These apps will keep sharing information with the company even after an account is deleted as they work without necessarily being connected to Facebook. However, they inevitably report and track users’ activity – since their parent company is Facebook, after all – and therefore will still present users with targeted adverts.