Unfortunately once backup assistant is turned on there's no stopping it and it will always run in the background.... one of the reasons I hate it and prefer using Google to sync.
You can either do a factory reset and never activate it again.... if your contacts are already backed up with Google or....
To save you the headache:
1) Be sure to have all your contacts backed up to your Gmail account. Check online before proceeding to step 2.
2) Log into your My Verizon account. Go to the contacts tab, sort by list view and select all contacts. Delete the entire list. There's a deleted contacts tab as well. Select that and delete anything that's in there.
3) Go into your Thunderbolt settings tab, select applications, manage applications. Do not sort or filter, allow list to populate. Select Sync Service, (icon resembles backup assistant icon) select clear data.
4) Also in manage applications scroll down to backup assistant, select clear data. This should do it.
5) To verify backup assistant is now disabled, select settings, accounts and sync, then under manage accounts, select backup assistant. You should be looking at a license agreement screen.
Don't activate it again.
For duplicate Google and Facebook contacts:
You can manually delete the duplicates or manually link the duplicates.
Linking duplicates:
Go into contacts.... long press on the contacts name.... view details.... menu...link. Once you choose link you can go through the contacts and select the duplicate to link to.
Facebook automatically uses its profile pics for your contacts. If Facebooks contact names don't match your Google contact names it will create duplicates.
If the names do match.... you will get a popup notification asking you if you would like to merge contacts..... much easier as it will automatically merge/link all the duplicates for you in one step.