To provide a method of releasing charges which have been injected into charge accumulating layers of nonvolatile memory elements without using a substrate terminal such as a p well or an n well, as a method for deleting data from a NAND-type nonvolatile memory. In the method for deleting data from the NAND-type nonvolatile memory, charges stored in a charge accumulating layer of a first nonvolatile memory element are released by applying a first potential to a bit line and a source line, a second potential to a control gate of the first nonvolatile memory element, and a third potential which is different from the second potential to a control gate of a second nonvolatile memory element.