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It is time to delete Facebook, one of the founders of WhatsApp has said.
Brian Acton's warning comes as the growing scandal over Facebook's use of data threatens to damage the company .
"It is time. #deletefacebook," he wrote on Twitter.
Show all 9 1 /9How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Lock your profile down If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Limit old posts Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Make yourself harder to find You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address. At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Control access to your Timeline You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Block people When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately. You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Review tags One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Clean up your apps You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information. If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Change your ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.
The post has been shared more than 4,000 times, and is one of only two posts he has shared since 2016. Mr Acton didn't expand on his reasoning or post any follow-up tweets, but it comes amid a troubling few days for Facebook.
After reports revealed that data firm Cambridge Analytica had been using Facebook to gather data about people and attempt to manipulate them into voting, attention has turned to the ways that the social network enables the collection of people's most personal information. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is just the beginning of the problems that social networks have with the use of data, experts have suggested .
Mr Acton got $6.5 billion from Facebook, when it acquired its app in 2014. But he didn't stay on, unlike his co-founder Jan Koum, who still serves as chief executive of the WhatsApp.
It's not clear whether Mr Acton is suggesting that people also stop using his own app, which is being ever more tightly integrated with Facebook. The two companies have been criticised over data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook.
Since Mr Acton left WhatsApp he has been heavily involved with Signal, a competing chat app that prides itself on being secure in the ways it uses people's data.
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