Facebook Users: Protect Your Timeline Profile from the Public [Video]
After upgrading to Facebook Timeline, Facebook users’ old posts will be available to the public – even if they were only available to friends before upgrading.
Unfortunately, not many people are aware of this and are still posting everything publicly. My girlfriend. mom and boss were all posting everything to the public for weeks on their Facebook Timeline profiles before I notified them.
The first thing you need to do to avoid this situation is to “view your Facebook profile as public” to see which of your posts are actually available to anyone in the World.
In addition to the video tutorial above, this article will show you how you can view your Facebook Timeline profile as public:
How to View Your Facebook Profile as Public
Once you have done that, now it is time to change the visibility of your past posts. The following method will, with once click, make all of your old posts only available to your friends:
Make Old Facebook Posts NOT Public (Friends Only)
After you’ve done that, you’re Facebook profile is now much less transparent. You need to make sure that you’re aware of who is going to see your status updates when you post them from now on.
It may help to set the “default visibility ” for new posts on Facebook.
Go back to your Facebook Privacy Settings and find the section labeled “Control Your Default Privacy“.
Make sure you click the radio dial labeled “Friend” and then save your changes. After doing that, new status updates that you post will only be available to your friend unless you manually change the setting.
There are a number of other factors that you need to consider after updating to Facebook Timeline and the following article should cover the rest of the bases for you.
How to Prepare Your Facebook Profile for the Timeline Update
Make sure you share this post and video with all of your Facebook friends to ensure that they also protect their profiles.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please post them in the comments sectio below!
About Anson Alexander
Anson Alexander is a graduate from the University of Tampa with a degree in International Business and Information Systems.A previous IT Administrator for a medium size publication company, Anson has recently decided to work full time on his own business by publishing on AnsonAlex.com, publishing technology tutorials on YouTube and offering SEO, IT training and digital marketing services.His main interests include technology, social media, infographics, economics, marketing and web design.Connect with Anson on Google+.
Hi Anson,
Great Post…
I am now using the new Timeline. How can I hide some of the groups I have joined from Friends and the Public?
Also, on my original profile before Timeline, I had restricted certain members from seeing my list of friends. However on timeline, they are able to do so….How can i change that?
Tammie,
Thanks for checking out AnsonAlex.com!
As of right now, I don't believe there is a way to hide the groups you've joined from your friends although I'll delve a little deeper into it and report back if I discover anything.
As for managing the visibility of your friends list. That is a great question and I think I'm going to publish a video tutorial on just that.
The easiest way to do it is to click right on your friends list from your Facebook Timeline profile page. At the top right you will see a button called "edit". If you click that, you can specify the exact visibility of your friends list.
Hope it helps and, again, thanks for watching!
- Anson