With the new Facebook Timeline roll out, you must be pretty excited about the new changes. By uploading your favorite Cover photo and updating a few life events, you must be having that new Facebook feeling all over again. Well, here is the bad news - Facebook Timeline can leave you potentially open to stalkers, not just those who are outside your friends circle, but those who are your current friends. How? Well, here is a personal experience -
Privacy
The new Facebook Timeline has effectively undone what Facebook has been trying to build. The previous version of Facebook profile wall could be completely blocked from certain folks. And friends could only see upto a certain extent of your Facebook posts. After a bit of scrolling, Facebook wouldn't show any more posts, even if you had posted something way back.
With the current rollout, the entire profile will now be managed with MySQL giving you all the posts from any point of time on your Timeline. So, your night out with your friends 4 years back is now open to your current Boss and the posts which you wrote after your break-up can now be viewed by your colleagues(worst-case scenario!)
The Way Out!
There is only one. However, it's really cumbersome. You need to manually go to each post and turn the privacy knob. There are two ways to this torture -
- Go to your Timeline -> Visit your posts --> Notice the setting --> Update privacy setting
This will take a lot of time, especially if you post almost everyday.
- Go to Activity Log --> Select "Your Posts" --> Go to your status --> Updating Privacy setting
This will clear out all the links and other stuffs that you have done and will give you just your posts. However, that being said, you will still have to manually update the privacy setting of each post.
Thankfully, the update won't change the existing settings with your albums. Just make sure to see how your profile looks to others through the "view as" tab. This will give you an idea on the posts/pictures you need to hide.
Hope this post has helped you to make your Facebook profile safe from stalkers. In case of any doubt, feel free to drop your comment below! Cheers!
