FLUSHING FACEBOOK

Unless you’re already off the grid, you’ve probably heard by now that Facebook has an image problem on its hands.

The New York Times and The Guardian recently uncovered extensive data breaches on the social media platform, in which the political campaign data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data belonging to 50 million Facebook users.

In the past two weeks, Facebook stock has plummeted nearly 20 percent, costing the company roughly $80 billion.

Adding insult to injury, Average Joes and CEOs alike are now calling on users to delete Facebook. However, severing ties with the social media giant isn’t as easy as pushing a button.

Brett DeLange, chief of the consumer protection division of the Idaho Attorney General, warned social media users that deleting the app doesn’t delete your worries.

“Even if you deleted the Facebook app, the information doesn’t necessarily go away,” DeLange said. “It’s just not that black and white, or that quick.”

He explained that consumers should be aware that companies like Facebook profit by tracking your habits while using their platforms.

“The reality we face is that our browsing, our clicks, our likes are tracked, then monetized,” DeLange said. “Facebook makes money by gathering information about you, because their claim is that advertisers can then more effectively tailor their ads.”

DeLange also reminded users that they sacrifice privacy by using social media, and encouraged them to become better-versed with the technology.

“We don’t often have as much privacy as we appreciate,” he said, “so we need to maybe go in with our eyes more wide open.”

For those who feel they can no longer in good conscience keep logging in to Facebook, it’s important to understand how to deactivate an account — and prevent it from being reactivated.

Before deleting your account, you’ll want to download your data — can’t let all 300 photos from that family vacation vanish into the ether — which can be done using the Facebook help page.

After that, consult the website deletefacebook.com for step-by-step assistance.

Once you actually pull the trigger, though, your account won’t be permanently deleted for two weeks, and it could take up to 90 days to remove all data.

Even then, you’re not in the clear. Perhaps you also have a profile with one or more of these apps: Instagram, Spotify, Groupme, Dropbox, Kickstarter or Tinder.

All these platforms encourage or require users to connect their login to a Facebook account, and signing in to any of these apps will automatically reactivate your Facebook profile.

In order to avoid this, you’ll need to create a new login with each of these platforms — there are a myriad of others, too — that isn’t tied to Facebook.

If you’ve completed this laundry list, your work still won’t be done. Users may want to find a replacement for the services offered by Facebook, such as the news feed, events page and marketplace.

According to the tech magazine Wired, alternatives for each feature are available. Wired suggests substituting Nuzzel for the news feed, Doodle for events, and Nextdoor for marketplace.

For those wanting to remember birthdays of friends and family, a calendar is a good option.

According to DeLange, consumers will have to reach a personal conclusion on whether they want to live in the social media realm.

“Sooner rather than later,” he said, “every one of us needs to decide our own comfort level and whether we want to use Facebook, or social media, at all.”