How to delete your Hacker News account

You cannot delete your account.

One of our users writes:

"Hacker News (HN) does not have a way to delete your account, but you can 'anonymize' your profile. [read the tip below!]. If you used your real life name as your username it's a bit more of a problem, especially if your name is not 'John Smith', you could try emailing the owner of the site either at info@ycombinator.com or pg@ycombinator.com. [...] From my experience you can email info@ycombinator.com and ask to make your account inactive but they won't delete any posts or submissions that you have made as I've been told 'they are just too entrenched'."

TIP anonymize your account

Because an account at Hacker News cannot be deleted, we suggest to make your data useless.

Be logged in on the site, then go to Profile Settings (Or Options, etc.). In all fields with personal data (such as name, address, city), fill in AccountKiller, if possible. If you can only choose from several options, change the value. If possible, use a homepage/URL field or long text field (such as Description) and put this line in it: https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested. This may incite webmasters to add an account deletion option.

TIP good to know

Publicly visible text/images often aren't properly deleted even when you succeed in deleting an account. Try editing or deleting them manually before deleting the account itself. If you're unsure what happens to your tracks: this can be found mostly in the Terms of Service/Privacy Policy; otherwise you can always contact Hacker News and ask personally. By the way, deletion requests don't necessarily mean your data will actually be deleted (e.g. due to legal obligations).