How to Delete Your FetLife Account (Delete vs Deactivate)

By Dev Mirza · Platform and privacy writer · Published 27 August 2026

To delete your FetLife account: log in, open Settings, choose “Delete My Account” and confirm. Your data is permanently removed after a 7-day grace period. If there’s any chance you’ll come back, deactivate instead.

Delete your account (permanent)

1. Log in to FetLife.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Select Delete My Account.
4. Press Confirm.

Your account and data are permanently removed after 7 days. Deletion is irreversible, so export anything you want to keep before you start.

Delete vs deactivate

Locked or can’t log in?

If your account is locked, check your email and your spam folder for a verification message, which can take hours to land. If nothing shows up, use the Contact Form or email support, or try a password reset through your recovery email. Login glitches are usually a browser or extension problem, so try a different browser before you assume the worst.

Before you go

What deletion actually removes, and what it can’t

Deletion clears your profile, writings, pictures and activity from FetLife once the grace period ends. What it can’t pull back is anything other people already saved: a screenshot someone grabbed, or a picture you sent in a message, sits on their device, not in your account. That isn’t a FetLife quirk; it’s true of every platform. The lesson runs upstream: assume anything you post could have been captured, and delete for a clean break rather than as proof it never existed.

Export anything you want to keep first

Because deletion is irreversible, save what matters before you confirm: your own writings, full-resolution copies of any pictures you uploaded, and the contact details of friends you want to keep up with elsewhere. Once the 7-day window closes there’s no undo and no support recovery. The export has to happen while the account is still live.

If you’re leaving because the community turned out not to fit, the problem might be the platform rather than the community. See the alternatives. Either way, review your privacy on the way out.

In practice

Deleting a FetLife account is simple, but do it deliberately rather than in a huff. Go to account settings and choose to deactivate or permanently delete; deletion strips your profile, posts and pictures from the site. First, save anything you want to keep, whether that is your own writing, your event history, or contacts, because it does not come back. Keep one thing in mind too: content you shared elsewhere, or that other people saved, does not vanish when your account does. Deletion clears your presence on FetLife, not the copies that already left it. Plenty scrub sensitive content first, then delete.

For beginners

Want out? Use account settings to delete, not just log off. Save anything you care about first, because it will not come back. And understand what deletion reaches: only what sits on FetLife. Anything you posted elsewhere, or that someone screenshotted, stays outside your control. Which is a decent reminder to be careful about what you put up in the first place.

For experienced members

A long-time user leaving usually does a clean exit. They unpost or scrub sensitive content, export their own writing, note their real-world contacts somewhere else, and then delete. They already know deletion cannot reach the copies that left the platform, so they think about the footprint they built over years, not just the final click. Winding down on purpose beats deleting on impulse.