3 Hacks to Delete Your Most Embarrassing Tweets

Every public tweet ever sent is now searchable on Twitter -- but chances are there are a few on your own account that you'd rather stay buried forever.

Before you get trigger happy with the delete button -- consider saving your old tweets for your personal enjoyment. Go to settings, scroll down and click "Request your archive." Twitter will email you a link when the file is ready to be downloaded.

It's always safe to assume what you post online will live forever in some corner of the Internet, regardless if you've deleted them from your Twitter account. If you're really ready to give your account a good scrub, here are three quick ways to get the job done.

Manual Deletion

Manual deletion is ideal for targeting specific tweets. For example: If you want to get rid of any incriminating tweets you may have sent mentioning where you work, type in your Twitter handle and company name (or perhaps other keywords you may have used, such as "hate my job.")

Once you've located the tweet you want to delete, click the More icon (...). Next, click "delete tweet."

Abracadabra! The tweet is now gone from your Twitter account.

Tweet Delete

Perhaps there's a specific time in your life you'd like to strike from the Twitter record.

Tweet Delete, a third party service, can take care of the job. Simply authorize the service and then choose how deep of a cleaning you'd like for your profile. This includes deleting all tweets more than one week old to getting rid of tweets more than one year old.

Deactivate Your Account

Deactivating your Twitter account is the most extreme measure of the bunch, however doing so can provide an opportunity to start again with a clean slate.

Go to account settings and click "deactivate my account" at the bottom of the page. You'll be prompted to read an agreement and enter your password to make sure you really want to close your account.

Twitter will retain the data for up to 30 days, during which time, you'll be able to reactivate your account if you have second thoughts. After the waiting period is over, the account will be deleted forever.