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Time to check your Facebook page

Time to check your Facebook timeline.

It appears that a glitch means some people’s private messages or chats are now visable on their timelines. Still to be confirmed or denied by FB.

How to fix it:

Click on a year on your the timeline.

You will see an item saying ‘xx friends posted on your timeline’

This appears to have been newly updated, and is where some people are saying messages are going. You can click on the small pencil icon (Edit or Remove) and press “Hide from Timeline” – you’ll need to repeat this for every year individually.

Apparently for some users messages have now been disabled.

The only way for your privacy to be absolutely safe is for data not to be retained at all. Facebook’s attitude has often been to hold onto as much data as possible for as long as possible, and this highlights the risks of that. Apologies may not be enough for people who have now had details of intimate conversations revealed to their friends.

It also demonstrates how acutely difficult it is to ever guarantee data security, and at a time the British Government is considering asking companies to collect even more data about their customers, emphasises the real dangers this poses even with corporate security operations.

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Online privacy, Social Networking
  • http://www.facebook.com/david.gosnell David Gosnell

    Very disturbing indeed. Thanks for the information.

    • guest

      If you don’t like your privacy being invaded, what in god’s name are you doing on farcebook?

      • just saying

        Please, walk into this decade. Being on the Facebook should not equal any loss of privacy, which is not expressly granted.

        • just saying

          Hideous typo alert: Just Facebook, not: the Facebook !

  • KP

    They are not the private messages but rather the post people have written on your wall. they have always been accessible to your friends.

  • Spartacus

    I don’t like FB and I am suspicious of them at every step, however this was clearly denied and explained away that it couldn’t even have occurred. Please don’t become a gossip rag that echos rumours.

  • http://www.facebook.com/david.gosnell David Gosnell

    There have been past instances of Facebook changing types of data – e.g. notes under the old groups got plastered over walls instead. Bear in mind that messages are not necessarily fundamentally different to any other user object on Facebook. For this to happen does not require an intentional move of data between tables, it could happen from a simple contamination or lack of understanding from a newbie programmer.

  • daydreamer

    I don’t like FB’s privacy or lack of privacy so I don’t use it.