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Q: How long do status updates, text, photos, et cetera, stay on Facebook?

I ask, because I want to use Facebook to create a historical timeline about an ancestor in my family so people can learn more about their heritage. I have Googled my question several times and all answers are confusing and mixed: some say everything stays on a FB page until you clean it off and others say Facebook deletes status updates and photos monthly.

This is an interesting way to use Facebook—to create a page for someone who is not currently living, and never lived during the time Facebook existed. (Typically, the question is the other way around: what to do with someone's existing Facebook account after they pass away?) And given the level of confusion constantly floating around about Facebook's data retention policies, it's no surprise that it might be hard to pinpoint exactly when (if ever) information gets deleted from the social network.

Luckily in this case, the answer is mostly straightforward. From Facebook's Data Use Policy:

We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide products and services to you and others, including those described above. Typically, information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted. For certain categories of data, we may also tell you about specific data retention practices.

Just to be sure, we reached out to Facebook to confirm this is indeed the policy for the above use case. The company confirmed that as long as you have not deleted the content yourself—or in the case of a message between two people, both people have not deleted it—the content should stay online indefinitely.

But as usual, there are some nuances to keep in mind about this policy. If you ever do want to delete the content, you should know that it's not likely to disappear instantly. As you may remember, we followed a thread for several years over how fast photos are deleted from Facebook's servers once you delete them from the site; as of late 2012, we verified that photos indeed appear to be removed within 30 days of deletion (our tests showed they were actually removed much faster).

It's not just about photos, though. As outlined in the same Data Use Policy referenced above, there are major differences between deactivating an account versus deleting an account, should you choose to eventually remove the account you created for your ancestor. Many Facebook users mistakenly think that deactivating their accounts equals deletion, but that is not so:

Deactivating your account puts your account on hold. Other users will no longer see your timeline, but we do not delete any of your information. Deactivating an account is the same as you telling us not to delete any information because you might want to reactivate your account at some point in the future. You can deactivate your account on your account settings page. Your friends will still see you listed in their list of friends while your account is deactivated.

So when you deactivate your ancestor's account, it's not really going anywhere. The data is still there, lurking somewhere on Facebook's servers, even if the "friends" of that account can no longer see it.

Deletion, however, is another matter:

When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from Facebook. It typically takes about one month to delete an account, but some information may remain in backup copies and logs for up to 90 days. You should only delete your account if you are sure you never want to reactivate it. […] Certain information is needed to provide you with services, so we only delete this information after you delete your account. Some of the things you do on Facebook aren't stored in your account, like posting to a group or sending someone a message (where your friend may still have a message you sent, even after you delete your account). That information remains after you delete your account.

I often see Facebook users confusing these two things. They usually become alarmed when they've deactivated an account, only to have all the old information show up again when they go to "register" a new account. But if you actually go through with a real deletion, the information shouldn't be there past 90 days—and hopefully it will be gone sooner.