You will lose your Instagram if you will delete your Thread’s account

HIGHLIGHTS

• Meta publicly launched its Twitter competitor ‘Threads’ on July 6th
• Threads is directly synced to your Instagram account and imports all profile information, including your username
• Turns out, you’ll lose Instagram if you decide to go off Threads permanently

Meta opened doors to its Twitter twin ‘Threads‘ yesterday and the app saw a stupendous number of signups within 24 hours, with unconfirmed reports claiming it crossed over 50 million downloads on its first day. While a part of this may be attributed to Threads’ syncing with Instagram, which automatically creates your profile on the new app with the same username and option to follow the same people, this autotune has a flipside, and a huge one at that.

 

Threads’ privacy policy states you lose Instagram when you delete your account

Turns out, you cannot permanently delete your Threads account without deleting Instagram too. Yep, if you signed up out of excitement and are now choosing to delete your Threads account, you will have to let go of Instagram too. This captive strategy is rather sneakily mentioned in the Threads Supplemental Privacy Policy, which most of us tend to agree to at the time of signup, without actually giving it a thorough read. “You may deactivate your Threads profile at any time, but your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account,” it says.

However, Threads does give you the option to temporarily deactivate your account, much like the way it works in other Meta-owned services like Facebook and Instagram. What it’ll do is take you off the app temporarily, but a single login will restore all your previous activity and account information. All your “Threads” (read tweets), likes and replies would not be visible during the time your account is deactivated.

How to deactivate your Threads profile

In case you wish to deactivate your Threads account, these are the simple steps you need to follow:

Go to your Threads profile and click on the two horizontal lines in the top-right corner.
Go to ‘account’
Choose the ‘deactivate profile’ option and confirm
It’s worth noting that Threads, as of now, is only available on mobile as of now and cannot be used as a web app.