How to Delete an Email Account

What to Check Before Deleting an Email Account

Before deleting your email account, it's essential to check for any subscriptions or services linked to it. You could lose access to critical notifications, billing statements, or recovery options for other accounts. Ensure you update your email address with banks, social media, and other vital services to avoid disruptions.

1. Sign in to Clean Email with the account you’re going to delete.
2. Scroll left menu to the Smart Folders.
3. Check the Finance and Insurance folder for important bills, then review Online Shopping, Travel, Wellness and Sport, Real Estate, and Social notifications for linked accounts.

After reviewing, change the linked email address for important accounts to avoid losing information.

Select your service provider from the list below:

• Gmail
• Yahoo
• Outlook
• iCloud
• Zoho Mail
• Proton Mail
• AOL
• Tuta
• Mail.com
• GMX Email

How to Delete a Gmail Account

Many people assume that it's necessary to delete their Google account in order to delete a Gmail account, but that's not the case at all. Google makes it easy to remove individual services, allowing its users to keep their Google accounts and use them to log in to YouTube, Play Store, and other Google products.

Back Up Your Gmail Before Deleting

To download your Gmail data, including all of the messages and attachments in your Gmail:

1. Visit the Google Takeout page.
2. Scroll down until you see Mail and click the checkbox next to it.
3. Under the Mail section, you'll see a button indicating the number of labels selected. Click this button to choose the Mail content options you wish to download.
4. Scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page and click the blue Next step button.
5. Choose file type, frequency, and destination and click Create export.
6. Wait for the export process to finish and check your Gmail inbox for a link to your data.

Delete Google Email Without Deleting All Other Google Services

Now that you've downloaded your data, it's time to learn how to delete a Gmail account without affecting your other Google services. The steps below will guide you on how to close a Gmail account separately:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://myaccount.google.com/
2. Select the Data & privacy tab.
3. Scroll down to Tools and click Remove data from services you no longer use.
4. Sign in to your Google Account again if asked.
5. Click Delete (the trash bin icon) next to Gmail.
6. Enter an alternate email address that isn’t a Gmail address and confirm to send a verification email.
7. Open the verification email sent to that alternate address and click the link in it.
8. Complete the process to permanently delete your inbox.

For phone steps, see our guide on how to delete a Gmail account permanently.

Remove Yahoo Email Account

Considering that more than 1 billion Yahoo! accounts have been breached in the past, it's safe to say that the company is one of the least trustworthy providers of email services in the world. Naturally, there are many former Yahoo! Mail users who would rather completely remove their email accounts than trust Yahoo to sufficiently protect them.

If you count yourself among them, this is what you need to do to delete your Yahoo email account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com/delete-my-account
2. Log in with your username and password.
3. When you reach the confirmation page, click Continue delete my account.

⚠️ You’ll lose access to all of your data and content, including your emails, email folders, calendars, Yahoo Fantasy teams, and Yahoo Finance portfolios.

Signing back in within 30 days reactivates the account (90 days in Australia and New Zealand; 180 days in Brazil, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India). See our full guide on how to delete a Yahoo email account. If you live in the EU, you can contact Yahoo! directly with a GDPR data erasure request.

Delete Your Outlook Account

The word Outlook can refer to both the popular desktop email client as well as the free email service from Microsoft (better known as Outlook.com). Let's start with deleting an email account from Outlook, the email client.

The following steps explain how to remove an email account from classic Outlook for Windows (this removes it from the app but doesn’t close the account itself):

1. Open Outlook and select File in the upper left corner of the screen.
2. Click the Account Settings option and choose Account Settings again.
3. Select the account you want to remove and then click Remove.
4. Confirm your choice by clicking the Yes button.

To delete an Outlook.com account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=845493
2. Read the information and click Next when ready.
3. Select all checkboxes to acknowledge that you've reviewed each of the most common account closure effects.
4. Choose whether the account can be reopened for 30 or 60 days.
5. Select a reason from the drop-down list.
6. Click the Mark account for closure button.

You can reopen the account until the 30- or 60-day window you chose ends. After that, Microsoft deletes your data and the account can’t be recovered.

How to Delete an iCloud Mail Account

Because your iCloud Mail mailbox is tied to your Apple Account (formerly Apple ID), the only way to remove it is to permanently delete your entire Apple Account, which will prevent you from using many Apple services.

If you’re still committed to deleting your iCloud Mail account, we highly recommend you first remove all devices associated with it (such as your iPhone or Mac so that you can later easily associate them with a different mail address).

To remove a device associated with your Apple ID:

1. Open Settings on your iPhone.
2. Tap your name to access the Apple ID and iCloud settings.
3. Scroll down to the section listing all your devices.
4. Select the device you want to remove.
5. Click the Remove from Account option.
6. Repeat the action for each device.

To delete your Apple Account (and your iCloud Mail account with it):

1. Sign in to Apple Data and Privacy page.
2. Scroll down and click the Request to delete your account link.
3. Select a reason for your request.
4. Confirm your decision to delete your Apple Account.

Delete a Zoho Mail Account

Assuming that you're an individual user and not an organization, you can delete your Zoho Mail account directly from your account settings. However, if your Zoho account belongs to an organization, you have to ask your organization admin to close it for you.

To delete a Zoho Mail account:

1. Log in to your Zoho Mail inbox and click the My Profile icon in the upper-right corner.
2. Select My Account.
3. Select Settings.
4. Scroll down and click the Close Account button.
5. To confirm your choice, enter your Zoho Mail password and select Close Account again.
6. Finally, click OK to confirm.

How to Delete a Proton Mail Account

As a security- and privacy-oriented service provider, Proton Mail employs a highly secure account deletion process that prevents deleted accounts from being recovered. What’s more, the service also doesn’t recycle usernames, so you don’t need to worry about someone registering your former email address and using it to scam others.

Here’s what you need to do to delete an email account:

1. Log in to your Proton Mail mailbox and click the settings gear icon at the top right. Then click All settings.
2. Go to Account and password and click the Delete your account button at the bottom.
3. Select a reason for leaving and click Continue.
4. Tick the confirmation box, click Delete account, and enter your password (and two-factor code, if enabled).

Before deleting your email account, just make sure to think your decision through because there’s no going back. The Proton Mail mobile apps can’t delete an account, so on a phone, sign in through a web browser instead.

Remove an AOL Email Account

AOL lets its users close their email accounts at any time, and it even lets them download their data for backup purposes. However, it can take up to 30 days for the request to finish processing and the download to become available, which is why we won't cover the process in this article. If you would like to learn more about it, you can visit AOL's help page, where it's described in detail.

To delete an AOL email account:

1. Open the following URL in your web browser: https://aol.mydashboard.oath.com/delete-my-account
2. Read the information on terminating your account.
3. Click Continue delete my account.
4. Enter the email address you want to delete in the input field.
5. Click Yes, delete this account to finish.

In most cases, you can reactivate a closed AOL account by signing in within 30 days. The exceptions are Australia, India, and New Zealand (90 days) and Brazil, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (180 days). By implementing a long delay, AOL wants to discourage fraudulent activity.

How to Delete a Tuta (previously Tutanota) Account

Many Tuta (Tutanota) users have struggled to figure out how to remove their mailbox in the past. Today, Tuta closes accounts through a dedicated termination form, linked as Terminate account at the bottom of the Tuta website.

Follow these steps to delete a Tuta account:

1. Open the Tuta termination form.
2. Enter the email address and password of the account you want to close.
3. Choose when the account should be closed. With a paid plan, it closes at the end of the current billing period and the subscription isn’t renewed.
4. Submit the form.

How to Delete a Mail.com Account

It doesn’t matter if you want to delete your Mail.com mailbox for security reasons or simply because you no longer need it, you can get rid of it—and all messages associated with it—in just a few simple steps.

To delete a Mail.com account:

1. Log in with your Mail.com address and password.
2. Click Account in the top right corner, then pick Delete Account on the left.
3. Click the Delete account button.
4. Enter your Mail.com password and click Save changes.

The good news is that Mail.com blocks all deleted email addresses for one year to prevent cybercriminals and scammers from taking advantage of them.

Delete a GMX Email Account

GMX makes it very easy for its users to delete their mailbox, and all their emails with it. Just like Mail.com, it blocks deleted mail addresses from being registered again for one year, giving you plenty of time to tell everyone you know that you’re no longer using the address.

Here are step-by-step instructions for deleting a GMX email account:

1. Log in with your GMX address and password.
2. Click Account in the top right.
3. Choose the Delete Account option on the left.
4. Click the Delete account button to proceed.
5. Enter your GMX password and click Save changes.

As you can see, the GMX mailbox deletion process is virtually identical to the Mail.com deletion process. That’s because both email services are run by 1&1 Mail & Media.

Conclusion

In part thanks to sweeping data protection and privacy regulations like the EU's GDPR, all providers of email services make it possible to easily remove an email account. In this article, we described how to delete an email account created with ten different providers, and most other email providers feature a similar email deletion process.