Deleting FB account is slightly more complicated. After you have deleted it, don't try to login for months to check out if it's gone.
To permanently delete your account:
1. From your main profile, click account in the top right of Facebook.
2. Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
3. Click Your Facebook Information in the left column. If you have Facebook access to a page in the new Pages experience: Click Privacy, then click Your Facebook Information.
4. Click Deactivation and Deletion.
6. Choose Delete Account, then click Continue to Account Deletion.
7. Click Delete Account, enter your password and then click Continue.
I had the same issue as GP… deleted around 2011 and it was back again with no indication I even deactivated it (let alone deleted it) when my password manager let me log in around 2017.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that I did everything FB allowed you to do to “delete” my account the first time. When I did it the second time, it’s not like it was more complicated or hidden than the first time, but it actually worked.
My conclusion is that, today, FB has a weird split between deactivating and permanently deleting your account (the latter takes more effort), but 10 years ago was nothing of the sort. They just let you think you deleted your account but didn’t actually do anything. Or maybe there was a bug with account deletion back then… or maybe they had an outage where they had to restore some stuff from a backup and my account got “recovered” in the process.
But the important point is that FB didn’t even acknowledge it with a message like “do you want to re-activate your account?” on my login in 2017… it was as if I never deleted it in the first place.
It was a while ago (2009) so I can't remember the exact process, but I seem to recall that even back then it was quite convoluted, and differentiated between deactivate and delete.
That said, I certainly haven't touched it since 2009 to check if it really was deleted.
Deleting FB account is slightly more complicated. After you have deleted it, don't try to login for months to check out if it's gone.
To permanently delete your account:
1. From your main profile, click account in the top right of Facebook.
2. Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
3. Click Your Facebook Information in the left column. If you have Facebook access to a page in the new Pages experience: Click Privacy, then click Your Facebook Information.
4. Click Deactivation and Deletion.
6. Choose Delete Account, then click Continue to Account Deletion.
7. Click Delete Account, enter your password and then click Continue.