Deleting online accounts that you no longer use is a good way to protect your personal information. Some sites make it easy for you to erase your account, while others, like Allrecipes, don’t allow you to do it yourself. You’ll have to contact their customer service team to get your account fully deleted, but there are some steps you can take to safeguard your information on the site.
Deleting Your Account
Contact the Allrecipes customer service team to delete your account.
Email the web support team at CustomerSupport@allrecipes.com, or call them at 1-866-528-7784. Provide your name and email address and ask them to delete your account.
- If they ask you why you want it deleted, you can tell them you no longer use the account or you don’t plan to in the future.
Log in again in two to three business days.
To ensure the team follows through with your request, try to log in to your account in about two or three business days. If you can still sign in successfully, then your account has not been deleted.
Call the customer service team to make the request again.
If your account is still active after a few days, it’s possible they just haven’t gotten around to deactivating it yet. To prioritize your request, call them and ask to speak to someone about deleting your account. Make it clear this is your second request and you’d like it to be taken care of promptly.
- You can email them again if you prefer, but you’ll likely get a quicker response if you call them.
Changing Your Personal Information
Delete your personal information if you receive no response.
If you still aren’t seeing your account deleted after multiple attempts at contacting the Allrecipes web team, change your personal information on the site to protect your privacy.
Click on your username to go to your profile.
Log into your account and click on your username (or the arrow beside it) in the upper right corner of the screen. This will bring up a menu where you can click on “Profile” to go to your personal page.
Navigate to the “About Me” tab.
Click on the “About Me” tab on the far left of the page. This will bring up several links that all take you to the same page where you can edit your profile, so click on any of them.
Delete your name, location, and social media links.
In all of the write-in fields, like name, tagline, and social media links, delete all of the personal information you’ve previously entered. For your location, select “None Selected” from the drop-down menu. Don’t forget to hit “Save” once all the info is gone.
- The website should allow you to have blank spaces for most of these items, but if not, make up fake information to fill these slots.
Change your username to something anonymous.
You still have to have a username, so change it to something that doesn’t indicate anything about you. For example, if your username had your name, initials, or nickname it in, change it to a jumble of letters and numbers or pick a random name or word that has no significance to you.
Revoking Third-Party Logins
Revoke access to your Facebook or Google accounts.
Allrecipes allows you to log in using your Facebook or Google accounts, so it’s important to revoke any access to these accounts that you may have given to Allrecipes. Navigate to both of these pages on your desktop or laptop if you’ve ever used them to sign in.
Sign in to Google and go to your account page.
While signed in to your Google account, click on your profile picture in the upper right corner and then click on the “My Account” button that appears in the drop-down menu.
Click on “Sign-in & security.”
Three columns will appear on the page, and the one on the left side of the page is labelled “Sign in & security.” Click on those words or the arrow next to them to get to the page where can you manage account access.
Click on “Connected apps and sites.”
On the menu bar on the left side of the page, click on “Connected apps and sites.” A list of apps and sites with access to your account will appear on the right side. To expand it, click on “Manage Apps.”
Select Allrecipes from the list to remove it.
If Allrecipes appears in the list of connected apps, click on it to expand its information. A button will appear that says “Remove.” Click on this button to fully disconnect Allrecipes from your Google account.
Visit the apps page of your Facebook account.
While logged in to your Facebook account, click on the small arrow in the upper right-hand corner and select “Settings” from the dropdown menu. Click on “Apps” in the menu that appears on the left side of the screen.
Hover the mouse over the Allrecipes app.
Find the Allrecipes app in the list of apps that have access to your account. You may have to select “Show all” to expand the list. Hover your mouse over the logo and wait for an X to appear beside it.
Click the X to remove Allrecipes.
Click on the little X that appears to the right of the Allrecipes information. This will revoke any access that Allrecipes has to your Facebook profile information.
Warnings
- Be aware that a “deleted account” may mean it’s deleted on the user end, but the company retains all the information. This is a stipulation that is often snuck into the terms of service that you agreed to when setting up the account.