How to delete a TikTok account

TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world, with roughly 1.7 billion users at the time of writing. Despite this, it has a poor record on data security, with a history of spying on journalists and multiple fines for improper data collection practices.

If you’re not going to be using TikTok anymore, we strongly recommend deleting your account. Hackers don’t care if your TikTok profile is inactive, and will try to compromise it regardless. If they succeed, they can use it to target your followers with spammy links, send direct messages impersonating you, or simply try logging in to other accounts, hoping that you’ve used the same password for multiple sites.

That’s where we come in. Below, we’ll provide a simple, step-by-step guide to deleting your TikTok account. We’ll also let you know how to lock your profile down, get a copy of your data, and temporarily deactivate your account, just in case you’re not quite ready to leave for good.

A quick guide to TikTok’s privacy issues

TikTok’s main attraction is its extremely accurate recommendation algorithm that can tell exactly what kind of content you like in just a few minutes. To make this work, however, the platform has to collect huge amounts of information, including your location, engagement metrics, and what kind of device you’re using. This, coupled with the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, led to several countries banning the app from being used on government devices.

In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Musical.ly (which TikTok had recently merged with) for collecting data on underage users without parental consent. Unfortunately, the company didn’t learn from its mistakes. In the following years, was hit with an additional fine for breaching European GDPR legislation, as well as a class-action lawsuit in the US. Additionally, in 2022, TikTok admitted that some of its ByteDance’s (its parent company) employees had improperly accessed journalists’ data to find out who was talking to the press without authorization.

Even if TikTok resolved its privacy problems, your information could still be at risk. In 2021, we discovered that a third-party organization had scraped profile information from 235 million users on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, leaving all of this data online and unprotected.

How to permanently delete your TikTok account

It’s actually pretty easy to delete your TikTok profile, but it won’t happen overnight. Instead, you’ll have a 30-day grace period to change your mind. Logging in at any time will reactivate the account, so you’ll have to actually move on if you want it to be deleted.

Follow these steps to get rid of TikTok for good:

1. Start by logging into TikTok and opening the Profile tab
2. Hit the three lines in the top-right and select Settings and privacy
3. Tap on Account, then Deactivate or delete account
   TikTok gives you lots of chances to change your mind, but be firm!
   Choose Delete account permanently
4. Provide a reason for leaving (alternatively, select Other and just type gibberish)
5. Hit Continue
6. Click the checkbox to confirm that you know what you’re doing, then tap Continue 
7. Select Continue again
8. You’ll be sent a verification code, either via SMS or email. Type this into the box and press Delete
9. Finally, tap on the Deactivate button

How to temporarily deactivate a TikTok account

Not fully sure you want to delete your account just yet? It’s also possible to deactivate your profile for 30 days, hiding all of your content while still having it available for you to watch. Here’s how:

1. Hit the Profile button on the For You page
2. Open the menu in the top-right and tap Settings and privacy
3. Tap on Account, then Deactivate or delete account, and Deactivate account
4. Hit Continue
   Deactivating your TikTok account basically lets you take a break from the platform without fully deleting your profile
5. Enter the code sent to your email or phone
6. Press the Deactivate account button
7. Click on Deactivate one last time. You’ll be logged out, and in 30 days, your profile will be available to the public again. Alternatively, you can cut this short by logging in again and tapping the Reactivate button

Protect your privacy on TikTok by changing these settings

If you’re going to use TikTok, a certain amount of data-collection is unavoidable. That said, there’s no reason to let other users find out more about you than the absolute minimum. To keep yourself as anonymous as possible on TikTok, we suggest doing the following:

• • Make sure Activity status is turned off. This stops people from seeing if you’re active
  • Disable all three options in Suggest your account to others
  • Turn off everything in the Sync contacts section of the settings
  • Set Location Services to Never
  • In the Messaging tab, turn off Read Status
  • Set Story to Only Me or Friends to stop strangers from viewing it
  • Under Downloads, turn off Video downloads
  • Ensure Liked videos is set to Only Me
  • Turn off Profile views. This way, people won’t be able to tell if you’ve viewed their profile
  • Enable 2-step verification 
  • Remove everything you don’t recognize under Manage app permissions. Ideally, you’d revoke permissions from every third-party app but a lot of people rely on them for posting to multiple platforms at the same time.

The best way to protect your privacy is to be skeptical of any unsolicited messages you receive and practice good digital hygiene. We recommend reading up on common online scams, learning how to spot phishing attempts, and using a password manager to make sure that one compromised account doesn’t lead to you losing access to multiple services.

Deleting TikTok: Frequently Asked Questions