Want to remove yourself from Craig Newark’s list of advertisers? Perhaps you’re interested in a competing service that we listed in our article on Craigslist alternatives? Well, we’ve got some unfortunate news for you: Craigslist does not provide a quick and easy way to delete your account.
However, you can try contacting Craigslist directly and see if they’ll delete your account for you. And even if they don’t, there are some things that you can do to limit the amount of information that is left on your Craigslist account, so that it won’t be of much use to anyone who tries to break into it.
Let’s talk about how you can go about doing this.
How do I delete my Craigslist account?
To delete your Craigslist account, there are two steps you need to take. First, log in and replace the personal information on your Craigslist account with random characters to anonymize your account. Second, contact Craigslist customer service and tell them that you want your account to be deleted.
Looking for more details of what exactly you need to do to have your Craigslist account closed? Find our list of detailed instructions for deleting a Craigslist account below.
Detailed instructions to delete your Craigslist account
1. Delete and anonymize your Craigslist information
Go to www.craigslist.org in your web browser (taking you to your local Craigslist sub-site) and log in. Go into each of your options categories and delete as much information as you can, or at least change it to something random. Just click in the boxes and press the “Backspace” key to get rid of what’s there, and perhaps replace it with gibberish. The one exception is your email address, since you may need it to get back into your account in order to resolve a problem.
See the last section of our tutorial on how to post on Craigslist for help with deleting your Craigslist posts – if you’ve posted any.
2. Contact Craigslist directly to delete your account
Click this link, and it will take you to a form where you can send Craigslist a message saying that you need help with your account.
Click in the boxes highlighted in the screenshot above and type in (from top to bottom):
- Your name
- The email address associated with your Craigslist account
- The subject of your message (e.g. something like “Please Close My Account”)
- A request to close your account, and an explanation for why you want to do so
When you’ve filled in all of the required information, click Send Message. Then watch your email, and see if Craigslist responds to your request. Good luck!
If you’re thinking about closing your account because of an issue with the site, make sure you check out our tutorial on how to contact Craigslist for other information about getting in touch with Craigslist. They may be able to help you solve your issue so that you don’t need to delete your account. If you decide to go through with deletion, we hope that we were able to help you find a satisfactory way to retire your Craigslist account!
