Apparently, I'm not the only one who has a gutted FB account

[littleman]

And if you do not have a facebook account, you cannot be tagged.

Right, so on the one hand the picture will not be linked to you, but on the other hand there are images of and possibly chatter about you out there that you'll not know about it.

[Rupert]

Yes but people always talk.... Only one thing worse than being talked about, and thats not being talked about.

And if you don't know about it,  it cannot hurt you inside. Also, if it not linked to you, then really its unlikely anyone else is going to link it to you.  imho.

If its out there, and you are tagged.  Then Everyone knows about it, and that its you, not just "some jerk". Labelled for life.  And Not Jones the church builder  

[rcjordan]

Daughter's social media posts undermine Reynolds' care claims, prosecutors say

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-mel-reynolds-daughter-illness-met-20160413-story.html

[ergophobe]

So, even if you remove your account you are probably still going to have data about you in there -- unless you have been a hermit for the last several decades*.

You can't stop people from using your name, but as I found out when I deactivated my account, it basically untagged me and vacuumed my messages out of my friends inboxes. Which I hadn't counted on b/c there were some people I only contact via FB and I sent them a message telling them how to reach me by email... which they only got if they read their messages in the space between when I sent it and when I deactivated.

Since it was a group message, someone copied and pasted the "reply all" responses (why did people think I would get those when I said "I will not be reading FB messages anymore"?)