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Bad news: Scammers can take over your old social media accounts, especially ones that are accessible via breached or easy-to-guess passwords, and turn the profiles into "zombies" offering up malware or crypto scams. The best way to stop them from using your old screen names, photos, and videos is to download your profile information and then delete those accounts.
Despite common advice that you should try to claim your username on every platform you can find, you should let go of any accounts you’re not using, and only sign up for services you actually intend to use. Deleting your old accounts ensures that your screen names won’t suddenly come to life and start promoting flat tummy teas and dodgy crypto investment groups.
According to a study conducted earlier this year by Security.org, 29% of respondents experienced a hacker taking over their accounts, and more than half of those people lost access to a social media account. In a report on corporate zombie accounts, researchers at Reason Labs say that criminals gained access to former employees’ accounts using brute-force attacks, password cracking techniques, or phishing attacks.
Below, I’ll tell you how to completely delete your Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts. I’ll also describe ways to recover a profile when you can't access (or remember!) the email you used to sign up for the account.
Terminate Your Facebook Account
You probably have a lot of personal information on your Facebook profile that’s prime for picking by scammers. What’s worse, if your Facebook account is not protected with a passkey or some form of multi-factor authentication (MFA), all of your private messages, photos, and videos may become fodder for impersonation schemes or phishing plots on the platform.
Keep in mind that deleting your Facebook account will also delete any groups you’ve started, any business pages associated with you, and your Marketplace account. Facebook offers a 30-day buffer after account termination, which means you can restore your account if you deleted it in error, or if you have a change of heart. If you are on the fence about deleting your account, secure it using a passkey or MFA, and deactivate the profile.
(Credit: Meta)How to Delete Facebook
First, read PCMag’s guide to delete your Facebook profile. Next, I recommend downloading a copy of your Facebook data. You may be surprised by how much data Meta has about you and the people in your network.
After downloading your data (it may take up to three days for the file to show up in your inbox), visit the Meta Accounts Center to delete your account. Here’s a direct link for convenience’s sake.
Can’t Access the Email Associated With Your Facebook Account?
I ran into a roadblock when deleting the Facebook profile I created in the mid-aughts. I tried to log in, and then remembered that I deleted the email address I used to create the profile. Luckily, I had associated other email addresses with that account, so Facebook let me recover my profile.
Here are some other ways to recover your account if you’ve lost access to your old email address:
- Change Your Email Address: If you can't access your email, but you can still log into your Facebook account, change the email address associated with your account in your Profile's Settings menu. When you download your profile data, the files will go to your new address.
- Use Your Phone Number: If it's been a long time since you've logged in, and you can't access your login email, click on the "Forgot account?" link at the top of the Facebook login page. From there, enter your email address (if you can remember it) or the mobile phone number you last associated with the account, and Facebook will locate your profile.
- Verify Your Identity: If you can't access your Facebook account because it was hacked, visit this link. Facebook's verification system will attempt to help you verify your identity and recover your account. After completing that process, you should be able to delete your account.
Still having trouble recovering your account? Visit Facebook's Help Center for troubleshooting assistance.
Say Goodbye to Instagram
At some point, I opened an Instagram account for my houseplants (don’t ask), but after my calathea lost most of its leaves, I lost the will to maintain the page. When I was ready to delete it, I read PCMag’s guide for deleting an Instagram account, and you should, too.
Here’s the quick version:
- Visit the Meta Accounts Center to download your profile data.
- Delete or deactivate your account from the Settings menu.
(Credit: Meta)Deleting your Instagram account removes all of your comments, followers, likes, photos, and videos from the company’s servers. You have 30 days to change your mind and restore your account. After that, Meta says your data is gone forever, though it can take up to 90 days for the company to finish processing your request.
Can’t Access the Email Associated With Your Instagram Account?
Facebook and Instagram are Meta siblings, so it’s no surprise that the platforms share the same process for deleting an account when you can’t access the email associated with it. To save you a scroll up, I recommend entering your last known phone number in the “Forgot Account?” field when prompted, and if that doesn’t work, visit Instagram’s Help Center to request assistance.
Become an Ex X User
I started using Twitter for work in 2008, but I ceased using my accounts well before the platform rebranded as X in 2023. My decision to take my conversations to federated social platforms like Mastodon or private Discord communities seems like a good idea in the wake of X’s recent controversies, which include the platform’s AI chatbot praising Hitler and the alleged harassment of a government employee.
Plenty of former Twitter users have already left for competitors such as Bluesky and Meta’s Threads, but if you are hoping to join the exodus, the good news is that X makes it easy to delete your account.
(Credit: X)How to Delete Your X Account
I don’t know about you, but I think everyone on Twitter was funny between 2012 and 2015. If you agree, head to the Settings menu within your X profile to download an archive of all of the data Twitter/X collected about you over the years, including your hilarious tweets and direct messages.
After you’ve saved all of the evidence of your online moments in the sun, go back to the Settings menu and choose to deactivate or delete your X account. Don’t worry, if you change your mind, you can just sign back in within 30 days and all will be restored. For a step-by-step breakdown of the X account deletion process, check out PCMag’s guide.
Can’t Access the Email Associated With Your X Account?
As with the other platforms listed above, it’s possible to restore your X account without your email address, but the process goes a lot smoother when you know the phone number associated with the account and still have access to it.
The first thing to try is the “forgot password” option on X’s login page. When the company requests a phone number associated with the account, enter it, and the company will text you to verify your identity. If you switched phone numbers, your other option is to contact X’s support team and submit a help ticket.
According to X’s help site, if a user’s identity cannot be verified, the company may remove the account from its system when it becomes inactive.
Update Your Social Media Habits
In social media’s early days, my colleagues and I received "best practice" advice regarding our work accounts. We were told to secure our social networking accounts with a password, follow the company’s code of conduct, and make every effort to claim verified usernames on every platform, even if you don’t post to the platform often. These usernames usually included our real first and last names.
That advice is outdated in 2025. Now, I tell people to secure their profiles by using a passkey or adding an MFA method to the login process, and I recommend deleting all inactive social media accounts to prevent account takeovers.
The advice above goes for your other online accounts, too. Website breaches happen daily now, but attackers can’t take your data if you remove it first.
Take more steps to lock down your digital identity with our cybersecurity checklist. For a list of the best apps for online privacy, check out PCMag’s Ultimate Privacy and Security Toolkit.