Help. How do I remove myself from Facebook. (1 Viewer)

[Stan]

Was leaving a comment about the Mario Batali rip-off story and it required me to sign up for Facebook. Figured no big deal, just an email address and I can leave comments. Somehow it snoops through your address book, and any name even close pops up wanting to be your friend. I have since gotten hundreds of emails and dozens of messages on my phone. How do I get off Facebook. I'm probably a little panicked so am not reading the site as carefully as I should, but I can't find a way to get out of it. Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Steve_Pannell]

I haven't done it myself but you can find out how on this page: http://www.facebook.com/help/basics Account Settings and Deletion I don't know if it's true or not but I've heard that you have to stay completely away for at least 14 days. Don't go and check to see if you account has been deleted or it will re-activate your account. As I said, I don't know whether this is true or not so someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Stan]

Thank you for the link. Looks like it will work and I'll definitely stay away for 14 days, that appears to be true. What a nuisance. Had no idea it would just take over like that. Must have virus writers working for them.

 

[Will_B]

Sounds like you gave it permission to do a "Contact Sync" with your phone. But those hundreds of suggestions that you Friend people aren't coming from your friends, they are just automatic messages from Facebook that basically says "we think you know this person, send them a friend request!". You don't have to.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Originally Posted by Will_B

Sounds like you gave it permission to do a "Contact Sync" with your phone. But those hundreds of suggestions that you Friend people aren't coming from your friends, they are just automatic messages from Facebook that basically says "we think you know this person, send them a friend request!". You don't have to.

I think there is an option where it askes to go through your address book. I made the mistake of not unchecking this on Linked In recently...

 

[Stan]

Thank you for the info. I'll try again, but this time do it properly. My sister and other relatives are on it so I'd like to join and keep in touch. Like I mentioned, this was a sign-on simply to comment on a news article. They must have set up all the other crap behind the scenes so I was bombarded with emails and phone messages. Never saw anything related to Contact Sync but will definitely be on the look out this time. Somehow they must grab your address list because the only time I used my phone for email was to send something to myself to see what my phone email was. A bit of trivia, I received 279 "friend" requests in less than an hour, along with 12 phony phone messages. Good thing I was online, I might have checked the next day and found thousands.

 

[DaveF]

Facebook is probably set to email you notices when you receive friend requests, etc. you can turn it off in your account settings if you want.

 

[Stan]

Facebook is probably set to email you notices when you receive friend requests, etc. you can turn it off in your account settings if you want.

I'll do this next time I try, which will be through their website, not a news story. There must have been a lot of preset items because I did what seemed like a very basic setup, nothing special. I've worked in IT for 20 years so am usually very careful about info I give out and especially signing up for things like Facebook, but I thought it was a trustworthy, reliable site to be on. I'll be much more careful when I do it again. As a slight aside the rogue emails eventually ended up to be over 500 before I got it shut off, slightly less than an hour I noticed it started.. Hopefully it wasn't sending viurses or other malware to people I know. Probably a minor mistake on my part, particularly since I used the news story, not their real site to set it up. Can't imagine them truly sending trojans and worms out because they have a pretty good reputation.