I’ve spent a whole 102 days in Facebook and have posted more than 9,000 updates. <\/em><\/p>\n Many people are reluctant to leave Facebook if only because it houses a lot of information about our lives that we haven’t recorded anywhere else.\u00a0There are ways, however, to break the addiction, get your information, and opt out of Facebook completely. But first, you must prepare.<\/p>\n If you want to leave Facebook but don’t want to leave your footprints behind, this article will help you get out cleanly and avoid a relapse.\u00a0And all this, without the need to delete your\u00a0account forever<\/a>.<\/p>\n Facebook gives everyone the ability to download a full backup of their account. It may take a while to generate a copy of your profile because it includes all the\u00a0photos, videos and articles that you’ve shared, as well as all chats and messages. Luckily, Facebook puts it all into a tidy ZIP file once its done.<\/p>\n Your exported profile is organized into sections,\u00a0even telling you who your exes were.<\/em><\/p>\n There’s also a more comprehensive way to get your\u00a0Facebook account details: an unofficial application called GiveMeMyData.com<\/a>, which gives you\u00a0all kinds of information like events, birthdays, ‘Likes’ and more. This information is exported in the\u00a0format of your choice including\u00a0plain text, XML and JSON, among others.<\/p>\n Combing both methods <\/strong>lets you extract any useful information you may want from your Facebook profile. The advantage of using GiveMeMyData is that the information is extracted in a format that’s easy for other applications to read,\u00a0which in theory makes it easier to import your data to other social networks.<\/p>\n One of the hardest things about leaving Facebook is the fact that many people use their Facebook login<\/a> details to log in to different apps, as well as to sign-up to use new web services.\u00a0By linking\u00a0to a dozen\u00a0key services, Facebook becomes indispensable.<\/p>\n From the Apps menu<\/a> in Facebook, you can see all the apps\u00a0that are connected with your Facebook account. Games like Candy Crush Saga<\/a>, web sites you use every day, official apps for Facebook, even operating systems \u2013\u00a0all of these applications at some point request permission to connect with your Facebook account<\/a>, either to send updates, to log\u00a0in, or to collect data.<\/p>\n Before you leave Facebook, you need to clean up your connected apps. If you don’t remove these apps, there’s potential for them to become a backdoor through which an attacker could access your account, and finding out that your Facebook profile has been resurrected by someone other than you\u00a0is never a good thing.\u00a0On the other hand, you also want to be able to log in to other websites without using Facebook. Consider two key points in the process:<\/p>\n At the same time, take note of\u00a0the apps that you want to keep using so that you can\u00a0access them with a username and password instead of clicking on the blue button. Imagine, for example,\u00a0that you signed up to Codecademy using Facebook and haven’t created a password. In this case,\u00a0it’s time to enter Codecademy and create a new username and password.<\/p>\n Take back control of your account and\u00a0say no to blue little button.<\/em><\/p>\n If you’re comfortable enough to show your Facebook friends\u00a0what you’re listening to on Spotify<\/a>, you may\u00a0have trouble ridding yourself of the social network.Why? Because you can no longer access Spotify without reactivating your\u00a0Facebook account every time.<\/p>\n If you created your Spotify account before September 22, 2011 , you can break the link between Spotify and Facebook from the Spotify Preferences window, in the ‘Social Networks’ section. Also make sure to\u00a0remember your Spotify\u00a0username and password<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you created your account without Facebook, you can dissociate yourself pressing this button<\/p>\n Unfortunately, if you’ve created your Spotify account through Facebook, you must first create a new account using your email address, and then move your\u00a0Spotify playlists from your old account. It’s a tedious but straightforward procedure, which you can do using the\u00a0following these steps<\/a>:<\/p>\n Playl<\/em>ists associated with your Facebook account can be opened from another independent account<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Recreating\u00a0lists, however, only solves part of the problem.\u00a0The other is what to do with your registration: Spotify, at the moment,\u00a0leaves no choice but to cancel and re-register your account. If you contact Spotify’s\u00a0customer service<\/a>, there may be a way that they can help ease\u00a0the transition to a\u00a0non-Facebook account .<\/p>\n The last resort is to contact the customer services of Spotify<\/em><\/p>\n When you leave an apartment,\u00a0you throw away old furniture.\u00a0When you leave a social\u00a0network, why not tidy up your contact list? That way, if (and when) you come back, you’ll only have to see the people you want to.\u00a0 At the same time, it’s not a bad idea to appoint three or more trusted contacts<\/a> to\u00a0your profile. Trusted contacts are friends who can help you access your account if you ever have trouble logging in.\u00a0You can find them in the Security menu<\/a>, and they’ll be notified as soon as you save your selection.<\/p>\n If you’ve created or manage Facebook pages, it’s smart to\u00a0appoint an administrator to take care of the task. If\u00a0not, the page will still be there, but no one will able able to moderate comments.<\/p>\n Another option? Withdraw the page temporarily, although it may be cruel for fans.\u00a0Deleting pages is possible<\/a> as well, but it takes a few days.<\/p>\n If you decide to leave, you’ll mostly likely\u00a0stop paying attention to\u00a0account activity, including attempts to\u00a0access your account. Make it\u00a0difficult for people trying to steal your account\u00a0and change the password<\/a> to one that’s long and difficult to guess.<\/p>\n Another good measure is to enable two-step verification<\/a> and entry notices, which warn you of possible attempts to access your account from other devices.<\/p>\n You can leave a note on your wall 24 hours prior to closing your\u00a0account, or send a message to all your contacts, warning them that you’re leaving the social network. Alternately,\u00a0you can completely ignore using Facebook\u00a0and announce that you’re closing your account on other\u00a0networks, like Twitter. It might even be useful to let your friends know that they can find you on other social networks.<\/p>\n The first thing that Facebook lets you do is to disable the account. When you disable it, you can return to it anytime, with all contacts and content from before. If you don’t want your information to be stored,\u00a0or if you intend to delete your account completely, you must request permanent\u00a0deletion using this form<\/a>.<\/p>\n Deleting your\u00a0account before you’ve done all of the above not only prevents access to other applications, it also prevents any way of recovering your data. And if you did decide you wanted to return, it would be impossible to do so without opening an entirely new profile. For this reason, I\u00a0don’t recommend entirely deleting your profile, but, its up to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You’ve finally gotten the courage to do it. You’re going to leave Facebook. But are you done\u00a0packing?\u00a0I’ll explain what you should do before you leave the popular social network behind. Leaving Facebook without preparation does more harm than good. There are accounts and associated apps; \u00a0there are pictures, videos and messages lingering online.\u00a0Suddenly disabling your … Continue reading “I want to quit Facebook. 7 essential tips for a painless separation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2044,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[2353],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-59755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionfacebook"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2044"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331414,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59755\/revisions\/331414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59755"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=59755"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=59755"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=59755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Find](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/Time-wasted-on-Facebook.png\" "\\"Find")
<\/em><\/p>\nGet a complete copy of your profile<\/h3>\n
![\"Your](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/memorial.png\" "\\"Your")
<\/p>\n![\"Give](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/alldatafb.gif\" "\\"Give")
<\/p>\nRemove apps connected to your account<\/h3>\n
![\"Remove](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/login-256x174.png\" "\\"Remove")
<\/p>\n![\"Facebook](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/apps.png\" "\\"Facebook")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"Create](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/loginproper.png\" "\\"Create")
<\/p>\nDon’t forget to disconnect Spotify from Facebook<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/disconnect.png\" "\\"Disconnect")
<\/p>\n\n
![\"Move](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/spotifyback.png\" "\\"Move")
<\/p>\n![\"Contact](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/support.png\" "\\"Contact")
<\/p>\nClean up your friends and name your ‘trusted contacts’<\/h3>\n
![\"Choose](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/trusted.png\" "\\"Choose")
<\/p>\nMove your administrator rights to other users<\/h3>\n
![\"Move](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/page.png\" "\\"Move")
<\/p>\nChange the ‘lock’ before you leave<\/h3>\n
![\"Create](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/pass.png\" "\\"Create")
<\/p>\n![\"Get](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/security.png\" "\\"Get")
<\/p>\nFinally, notify your contacts (if you want)<\/h3>\n
![\"Notify](\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/01\/bye.png\" "\\"Notify")
<\/p>\nAnd if you want something even more radical… delete your account<\/h3>\n