How to remove 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’.”
Helpful Trick: Obfuscate your profile info.
Because most accounts and profiles at Hacker News cannot be removed, we suggest you login and change your account and profile information altogether.
Make sure you are logged in to your account on the site and click on the profile or options settings. Locate the fields with your personal info (email, name, address) and fill in generic, random information instead. If you can only select from several fields, change anything personally identifying. If possible, use a homepage/URL field or long text field (such as Description) and put this line in it: https://remove.org/removal-requested. This may encourage webmasters and admins to create an easier removal outlet.
Helpful Trick: Removing online data
Publicly visible text/images often aren’t properly removed even when you succeed in removing an account. Try editing or removing them manually before removing 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, removal requests don’t necessarily mean your data will actually be removed (e.g. due to legal obligations).