Facebook privacy: How to check and hide your old messages

2 Oct 2012, 6:15 pm   -   Source: Rhiannon Elston, SBS
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Many Facebook users mistakenly believed their old private messages were being made public. (AAP)

Many Facebook users mistakenly believed their old private messages were being made public. (AAP)

The world’s most popular social media site may not be leaking your private messages, but your old wall posts could be revealing more personal information about you than you would like.

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The world’s most popular social media site may not be leaking your private messages, but your old wall posts could be revealing more personal information about you than you would like.

Recent changes to Facebook settings mean old, archived information that once took pages of scrolling and a considerable time investment to access can now be found by any of your friends in just a couple of clicks.

This has caused considerable confusion among users, many of whom mistakenly believed their old private messages were being made public. Facebook has reassured its users that this is not the case, but you only have to follow these steps to see what all the fuss is about:

How to see your old wall posts

1. Login to your Facebook page and click on a year from early in your Facebook usage.



2. You’ll be taken to your archived information from that year. On the right-hand side, you’ll see a box that says ‘Friends’. All your old wall posts from that year are contained within. Although they may look like highly personal messages, they are actually wall messages, and unless you've hidden them, they're visible to your Facebook friends.



Analysts claim these posts are causing alarm because we have forgotten how open we used to be on Facebook. Back in 2008, friendship groups on the site tended to be smaller. Gen Y users were younger and many may not yet have entered the workforce. What we were willing to reveal back then may be vastly different to what we are willing to reveal – to a wider audience – now.

How to fix the problem
It’s actually pretty easy to fix this problem. Just click on the ‘edit or remove’ pencil icon, and click ‘Hide from Timeline’. You'll need to repeat this step for each year in your timeline.



How to see everything you've ever written publically on Facebook

Now for the scary part: how to see everything you've ever made public on the social networking site. The good news is, it's easy to manage and delete the information, once you know it's there.

Go to your profile page and click on 'Activity log'. Using the same yearly timeline menu as outlined above, you can click through your Facebook history right back to where you first signed up to the site. And you can delete them, too - simply click on the circular button to the right and select 'delete'.

Have you had privacy issues with Facebook? Leave a comment below, or tweet or email the author of this article.
 

Email: Rhiannon.elston (at) sbs.com.au

Rhiannon Elston SBS , Facebook Privacy

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Your Comments

Fast Forword

Fast Forword - from Australia, 5 months ago

It is really great article about insurance. I would like to appreciate your work and would like to tell to my friends.

Facebook privacy

Kerrie - from Sydney, 9 months ago

This is rubbish! Both my daughter and I recently found private messages on our timelines. We both know for absolute sure and CERTAIN that these messages were sent as private inbox messages at the time. They were absolutely positively NOT forgotten wall posts!! Not all our private messages are visible, it's just a random selection, but they were all sent before Timeline was inflicted on everyone regardless of whether we wanted it. I think Facebook has had a glitch when they transferred all the data and they are trying to deflect blame. Both my daughter and I have deleted any old sensitive messages now, but there is no way they were ever wall posts!

Note from SBS News:
Kerrie, thanks for your comment. You are not the first to claim this, and we are still investigating. If you could send our reporter an email containing as much information as possible (all treated confidentially), that would help us clarify what is going on here: rhiannon.elston (at) sbs.com.au

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