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Mark Zuckerberg, Nipon Das wished he could quit you. After he left Facebook, Nipon Das wanted the social network to erase his personal information from its servers. Eventually that happened. But only after two months, a lengthy email exchange and — ultimately — threats from a lawyer. "It's like the Hotel California," Das told the New York Times. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." Facebook PR flack Amy Sezak claims the company is doing users a favor by making it easy to come back to the site after they quit. 6,000 members of the Facebook group "How to permanently delete your facebook account" don't seem grateful. Sometimes I quit means I quit. Here's a tricky way to do it without laboriously deleting all your wall posts and photos, according to WikiHow.

  1. Make sure your Facebook account contains a contact email address (such as Yahoo or Gmail).
  2. Delete any college, high school, or work email addresses listed in your Facebook account. Your contact email should be the only address listed.
  3. Deactivate your Facebook account.
  4. Register using an email address other than your contact email (a college, high school, or work email is fine).
  5. Once you are signed into your new Facebook account, add your contact email address to the account. Open the link in the confirmation email that has been sent. This step will wipe out your previous Facebook account, rendering it inaccessible.

The catch? It's not clear whether your previous account's data is still stored on Facebook's servers somewhere