A growing movement to delete Facebook is spreading across the world.

In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal – in which it emerged that Facebook was being used to gather information to help the Trump and Brexit campaigns – people are leaving the site in protest at the data that is being collected using the site and how it is being used. Some experts have argued that the controversial bits of Cambridge Analytica's tracking aren't actually unusual or remarkable at all, but instead a central part of how the site works.

The concerns have come to light yet again after Facebook revealed that a bug in its code exposed 50 million accounts.

How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Show all 9 1 /9 How 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 first step to take is to decide whether you're really sure you want to delete your account. Facebook offers a much less permanent option, called deactivation, which will stop your account from appearing in search and for other users, but allows you to bring it back.

But for that reason Facebook still needs to hold onto the data it holds on you. Deactivating might stop Facebook tracking you in the future, since you won't be using it – but all the information it has collected will still be around.

If you want to get rid of it entirely, then you can delete your account and with it the information that has been stored about you. (One useful middle ground can be to delete all of that and then start again, but don't add any friends or information to your account, and don't use it any more than you need to – that way you keep your place on the site, and can use it for whatever you need, while also ensuring that data gathered about you is kept to a minimum.)

Deleting your account is a major step, so think it through before committing. Facebook can take up to 90 days to process account deletion requests, but once your account's gone, it’s gone forever.

Before taking the plunge, it’s well worth downloading a copy of the data Facebook has on you.

To do this:

Click the downwards-pointing arrow in the top-right corner of the screen

Select Download a copy of your Facebook data

Once that’s done, you’re ready to delete your account. Bear in mind, however, that your sent messages will continue to exist even when all other traces of your account are gone.

To permanently delete your Facebook account: