I was quite surprised at how many hoops I had to jump through to permanently delete my Facebook account.
If you use the deactivation link from within your account preferences, the account is only deactivated and can be reactivated at a later stage if you change your mind.
However, if you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, there doesn’t seem to be any way of doing so from within your account preferences.
I had to resort to searching for an external url via Google.
If you want to get off Facebook permanently, log into your account and use the following link: