How long does facebook let you keep your account deactivated for?

[Jacqueline]

Does facebook ever delete your account? Would I be able to keep it deactivated for three years and then log in and use it just like I used to? Or is facebook going to delete my account?

[Andy]

Facebook does not delete deactivated accounts... even if you logged on after maybe a year or 2 the account would still be there and all you would have to do is reactivate it via confirmation email activation. Facebook however do delete accounts if you have deactivated it and request it to be deleted, if this is done then, if you ever decided to use a facebook account again you would have to create a completely new one. deactiavted accounts would still hold information on the database as deleted accounts would have all data removed.
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Correct... hate to break this to you but nothing ever gets deleted from a database on Social Networking sites. The same as all MYSQL Databases. When uses request there Account to be deleted... the data of that user is still intact, it has just been deactivated. It is kind of impossible to actually delete a users account within a database. Which is why Social Network sites seriously rape users privacy, and I dun even think that they even mention it in their privacy statements. So use these Social Networking sites at your own risk.. You have very little privacy on them.
If you delete your account it doesn't stay deleted in many cases.

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_you_deact...z22EIqWZFQ

[Mustafa Sami]

As long as you don't log in again.

When you deactivate your account, your profile and all its associated information are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook users. Although this means that you effectively disappear from the service, your information will remain saved by Facebook so that you can reactivate your account whenever you want.

Deactivation allows users to make their whole account invisible for temporary reasons and to recover all their information when they return, including their “list of friends” and their photos, just as it was before they left. To recover all their stuff they just have to log in again after 24 hours have passed since the deactivation.