All the rumors floating around that Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your photos without your permission, despite being complete nonsense, have left such a bad taste in your mouth that you are giving the idea of deleting your Facebook account some serious thought? Or perhaps the news that Bill Gates has decided to give up on Facebook and the news that Martha Stewart likes Twitter better than Facebook was the final push you needed in making the decision to leave Facebook behind.

If you really want to give up on Facebook, things couldn’t be easier – from a course of action point of view. All you have to do is click the Facebook deactivate account link; but once you do so you are directed to a page where Facebook tries its best to get you to stay with the social networking site. And the way it does this is by displaying photos of five of your friends on the site I’ve mentioned before (the one you are directed to when you want to deactivate your account).

And as if that wasn’t enough, then Facebook pulls a guilt trip on you by displaying the following message: “Are you sure you want to deactivate your account, [friend name] will miss you.” That [friend name] better be someone I really care about, because I can tell you right now, there are some Facebook contacts I could gladly o withouth. But wait, there’s more: “Your [number] friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you." Way to play with the user’s emotions Facebook! Perhaps this explains how Facebook has more than 250 milion account holders.

Because that’s all this is, a guilt trip! If your mind is made up and you really want to deactivate your account (just the account, Facebook will lock down the content and hold on to it who knows how long) you are informed that “Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups.”