Will I Lose Tags When I Deactivate My Facebook Account?

Facebook tags show your association with a status, note, video or picture. If a person wants you to read her note, for example, she may tag you to get your attention. A friend may tag you in a status to show you were at an event together, or tag you in a picture or video from the event. Tagged items appear on your profile as long as you've enabled it in your privacy settings.

Sometimes you need to close down your Facebook account for a short period of time — for example, while hunting for a job. When you deactivate your account, the tags that connect to your profile will change from links to plain-text. So while your name will still be associated with the item that you've been tagged in, it won't link to your profile anymore. If you're concerned about losing the linked tags during a temporary deactivation, don't be — they become links again when you re-enable your Facebook account.

As in temporary deactivation, permanent deletion of Facebook removes the links from your tags and replaces them with plain-text. The difference is that you can never get those tags back once the profile is completely shut down. Even if you start a new profile with the same name at another time, those tags are left, plain-text, unless the person whose content you're tagged in removes the tag.

If you want all your Facebook tags completely removed, the best way to make sure they're gone is to remove each tag manually before you deactivate your account. Once your account is gone, no person can tag you in images anymore — at least not with a link to your profile. (Users can still make plain-text tags without an account for anything from a non-Facebook user to a lamp to a cat.) In order to remove tags manually, you have to go to each note, status, video or picture you're tagged in and remove each individual tag.