How to Delete an Old Twitter Account You Cannot Access

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How to delete your Twitter account quickly and permanently

Done with Twitter and want to get rid of your account as quickly as possible? We reveal how to quickly delete your Twitter profile and ensure your data is permanently wiped.

Want to get rid of your Twitter account? You might want to delete your account for any number of reasons, for example, you don't want to use the platform anymore, you want to start an account from fresh, or you're closing down a business account.

Depending on your reasons for deleting your account, you might want to get things done as quickly as possible. Thankfully, Twitter enables you to delete your account in a few simple steps. While there is a 30-day deactivation period, your account will no longer be visible (for the most part) during this time.

In this post, we reveal exactly how to delete your Twitter account. We also explain some precautions you may want to take to ensure all of your information is permanently deleted, and offer alternatives to account deletion that may be more suitable for some users.

Before you delete your Twitter account

Before you go ahead and delete your account, make sure you're doing so for the right reasons and have taken any necessary steps required. We'll go into more detail on these below but here are a few quick questions to answer before you deactivate:

Are you looking to change your username? If so, you don't need to delete your account and start a new one. Twitter allows you to change your username to one that isn't already taken. This way, you won't lose any of your followers and you can choose if you want to keep any or all of your Tweets.
Are you planning to set up a new Twitter account with the same username or email address associated with your current one? If so, you should do this before you deactivate your account.
Do you want to save some of the information in your Twitter account? In this case, you should request your archived data before you go ahead with the deactivation process.
Do you simply want to get rid of a lot of Tweets, but can't face the hassle of deleting them one by one? Instead of deleting your account and starting over, you can use an app such as TweetDelete to bulk delete your Tweets.

How to delete your Twitter account permanently

Thankfully, deleting your account just takes a few simple steps. To delete your account, you need to deactivate it. This tells Twitter you want to delete it. Deactivation will immediately remove your account (so people won't see your profile or Tweets on the platform), but full deletion won't happen until 30 days after deactivation.

Here's how to delete your Twitter account from a web browser:

Log in to your Twitter account.
From the main page, click the three-dot menu icon on the left sidebar and select Settings and privacy.
Select Deactivate your account.
Read through the information and click Deactivate.
You'll be asked to confirm your password, then you can click Deactivate one more time.

Deactivating from desktop.

How to delete your account on the mobile app:

Log in to your Twitter account via the mobile app.
Click your profile picture and select Settings and privacy from the menu.
Under your username, select Account.
Click Deactivate your account.
Read the messages and select Deactivate.
You'll be prompted to enter your password and then you can hit Deactivate one final time.

What happens after I deactivate my account?

Once you've confirmed your account deactivation, your Twitter profile and any associated information will no longer be accessible via the platform. However, it will take up to 30 days for Twitter to start the process of deleting your account. Full account deletion can take up to an additional week.

Within the 30-day period, you can reactivate your account at any time just by logging in and confirming reactivation. This is good news for anyone who has deactivated their account in error or has a change of heart a few days or weeks after closing their account.

However, it does mean that your username and email address will remain tied to that account for those 30 days, so you can't use them on another account.

Will any of my Tweets still be visible?

Note that some profiles and Tweets might still show up online in search engines or internet archives.

Search engines

Deleted Tweets or Tweets from deactivated or deleted accounts can show up in search results for some time (until those pages are recrawled). If links to deleted profiles and Tweets exist, clicking on them will take you to an error page, but their content could still be visible on the search engine results page itself.

If you're really in a hurry to have certain content removed, you can request that Google delete specific Tweets:

Log in to your Google account (or create one).
Copy the Twitter URL you want to remove.
Go to Google's "Remove outdated content" page.
Paste the Twitter URL you copied earlier.
Click the red REQUEST REMOVAL button.

Google removal request.

Bing and Yahoo offer similar services for deleting select URLs. Note that you can only request the removal of URLs that no longer exist. So for example, you can't request that a Tweet be removed if it still exists on the Twitter platform.

Internet archives

It's also possible to view some old tweets via an internet archive service. For example, the Library of Congress used to archive every single Tweet, but stopped the practice in 2017. Wayback Machine is another service that saves Tweets; the company doesn't disclose exactly how it decides which Twitter pages to archive, but Wayback Machine director Mark Graham says:

So we archive some tweets — not all of them and not even nearly most of them — but we do archive tens of millions of tweets every week, and we archive them from a variety of sources.

When asked if Donald Trump's Tweets were saved automatically, Graham's answer was "Pretty much. That's an easy one."

But, let's face it, unless you're a celebrity, politician, or another public figure, it's unlikely Wayback Machine will be saving your Tweets by default. That said, it does offer a feature called Save Page Now, which lets users archive a specific URL. Via this method, it's quite possible for one or more of your Tweets to end up in the archive. Once they're there, removing them is difficult as Wayback Machine only accepts removal requests from the domain owner.

How do I change my username or move it to another account?

If you want to change the username on your existing account, you can simply click the three-dot menu icon on your main account page, go to Settings and privacy > Account > Login and security, and change your username.

But what if you want to use your existing username on another account? You might assume that deactivating your account will immediately free up your username for use elsewhere. But this isn't the case. The username on a deactivated account will remain unavailable for 30 days (until the account is fully deleted).

Instead, you should change your username on your existing account to free up the username you want to use. Then change the second account username to the one you've just freed up. You should make the change as quickly as possible because once the username is freed up, anyone can grab it.

You have to make a similar switch if you want to use a particular email address on another account (as Twitter only allows one account per email address). Although, if you're a Gmail user, there is a way around this.

Gmail doesn't recognize dots in email addresses but Twitter does. So you can add the same email address but include a random dot. Twitter will recognize it as a new email address, but in reality, you'll have multiple Twitter profiles linked to the same email account.

johndoe@gmail.com

john.doe@gmail.com

jo.hn.doe@gmail.com

For example, the above three email addresses all look the same to Gmail but different to Twitter.

How do I save my data before I delete my account?

When you delete your Twitter accounts, chances are you might want to keep some of the data stored on the platform. Twitter makes it simple to download all of your data, including Tweets, media, and messages.

Here's how to save your Twitter data:

Go to the three-dot menu icon and select Settings and privacy.
Under Data and permissions, click Your Twitter data.
Enter your password and select Confirm.
Then click the Request archive button next to Twitter. There is also the option to request Periscope data which will lead you to your Periscope account (if you have one).
Once your data is ready, you'll receive a notification within Twitter as well as an email with a link. Now, when you go into Your Twitter data, there should be a Download archive button. Click this to download your data.

Download your archive.

What if I just want to delete all my Tweets?

Instead of deleting your entire account, you may simply want to delete your Tweets. One method is to go through and delete them one by one. To do this, you click the dropdown arrow in the upper righthand corner of the Tweet and select Delete.

Of course, depending on how many you want to remove, this could be extremely tedious (and carpal tunnel-inducing). Instead, you might find it helpful to use a third-party app such as TweetDelete or TweetEraser.

The TweetDelete homepage.

The free version of TweetDelete allows you to erase up to 3,200 Tweets at a time and you can decide how far back you want to go with your deletion. TweetEraser and the paid version of TweetDelete both offer the option to delete all of your Tweets in one go.

Twitter account deletion FAQs

Is deactivating Twitter the same as deleting?

Deactivating your account will remove your account from Twitter, but the action is reversible. Deactivation signals to Twitter that you want to delete your account, but the deletion process won't begin until 30 days after you deactivate. Deactivation is reversible for those 30 days, but once your account is deleted, it can't be recovered.

Can I delete my Twitter account and make a new one with the same email?

You are not allowed to have multiple Twitter accounts associated with the same email. But you can change the email address associated with an existing account. When you deactivate your account, the associated email address won't be available for 30 days. If you want to set up a new account with that email right away, your best bet is to change the email on the account you're going to delete before you deactivate it.

Can I delete my Twitter account and start again?

You can start over on Twitter after you've deleted your account. But if you want to use the same username or email address, you should make the switch before you delete your existing account.

Do you lose followers if you deactivate Twitter?

Had a change of heart and want to reactivate your account? During the 30-day deactivation period, your followers remain untouched. So when you reactivate, unless someone has actively unfollowed you, your numbers should be the same. That said, Twitter does acknowledge that the following and follower numbers may fluctuate within the first 24 hours of reactivation. If the counts haven't been fully restored within 48 hours, you should contact support.

How long does it take for Twitter to delete an inactive account?

Looking for your old account but can't find it? Twitter may have deleted it already. The platform encourages users to log in regularly. If an account remains inactive for six months, Twitter may delete it.

How do I reactivate my Twitter after deactivating it?

If you want to reactivate your account, it's as simple as logging in from any device. You'll be prompted to confirm that you want to reactivate your account and then you can continue to use it as normal.

Why can I still see a deleted Tweet?

If a page is deleted or changed, it will take some time before it is recrawled and updated by search engines. In the meantime, the page can still show up in search results. For example, if you do a Google search for your name and "twitter," some of your Tweets will show up on the results page. These Tweets could include some that you have recently deleted. Clicking them will take you to an error page, but the content is still visible on the search engine results page.

As mentioned above, Google, Yahoo, and Bing allow you to request the removal of individual URLs from their respective results pages.

If you want to avoid this happening altogether, you can use the protected Tweets option within Twitter. This should prevent search engine crawlers from indexing your Tweets, although any new followers will now have to request permission to view your posts.

To change your Tweets from public to protected, click the three-dot menu icon and go to Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety . Under Tweets , check the box next to Protect your Tweets .

What does the Twitter archive show you?

Your archived data will come in the form of a zip folder. Clicking the Your archive link will show you an HTML document with an interface that's similar in aesthetic to that of the Twitter platform itself. This file holds all of your account information up until the moment the archive was requested.

You can view account information, Tweets, likes, direct messages, blocked and muted accounts, personalization data, lists, and more. Note that this file is for reference only and can not be used as a backup to restore data to your account.

Can you have 2 Twitter accounts with the same email?

No, you can't have two Twitter accounts associated with the same email or username. To use the same email or username on another account, transfer first, then deactivate your existing account.

Can you have 2 Twitter accounts with the same phone number?

Yes, you can have up to 10 Twitter accounts associated with the same phone number. But you can only have one phone number associated with each account.

Can you recover a deleted Twitter account after 30 days?

No, you will have to create a new account.