Will You Clean out your Social Networks for New Year?

Mike Halsey MVP
Dec 29, 2011
Updated • Jan 4, 2018
Companies, Internet, Twitter
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So it's almost time to dust off the old new year's resolutions, work out how many you kept (I kept all of mine for the first time), and then set some more to take you into 2012.  But if I may I'd like to offer up a suggestion, and that is that you go into 2012 with a clean social networking profile.

So what do I mean by this and why?  Well times are still hard and for all those people struggling in their jobs, or struggling even to find work after being made redundant employers are increasingly searching Facebook and Twitter for clues as to the types of people that they are hiring or that are already working for them.  Couple this with the fact that Twitter is and has always been completely public, and that Facebook seems to find ever increasing ways to make everything you say and post publicly available, and you could find yourself going into the new year with a problem.

I've recently gone through my Facebook account and deleted all the photo libraries I put online this year from holidays and days out.  Let's face it, each of these were only supposed to have been there for a few days, a couple of weeks at the most, so that my other friends could catch up with what had been going on but nobody would have looked at them since.  I'm extremely careful about what I put on Facebook, for instance I tend to avoid photos where I've had too much to drink (though the obligatory Saint Patrick's day hat photo will always remain a notable exception!) but even so it's wise to be cautious.

Facebook are currently rolling out their new Timeline feature that they dub "a new kind of profile".

Timeline is wider than your old profile, and it's a lot more visual.  The first thing you'll notice is the giant photo right at the top. This is your cover, and it's completely up to you which of your photos you put here.  As you scroll down past your cover, you'll see your posts, photos and life events as they happened in time. You choose what's featured on your timeline. You can star your favorites to double their size or hide things altogether.

In short Facebook want everybody's profile to be a complete history of their lives and do you really want all of this information available to everybody, and trust Facebook to keep it secret?  This is why I highly recommend not just removing old photos but modifying your status history as well.  Not that long ago Facebook offered a new feature that can be found in your Privacy settings called Limit the Audience for Past Posts.  Here you can control your privacy better for all the things you have said in the past, some of which you may not be completely proud of.  All of this is in the name of being constantly careful and vigilant about the company's proclivity to make everything public as often as they can.

With Twitter it's different because everything is already public.  Deleting old Tweets is a laborious process of removing them one at a time (I have almost 7,000 tweets in my account and don't want to face that!) but some tools such as TwitWipe are available to plug the gap.  This and similar services will completely wipe your Twitter history, enabling you to start from scratch with a clean bill of health.  That means the next time someone does a search online for your Twitter handle and the word "drunk" nothing will appear in the results.

Personal privacy is something we're giving up more and more as we get involved with social networks and companies that trade online, but it's such an important thing to guard.  Making sure that my privacy is maintained online will certainly be one of my resolutions for 2012, will you make it one of yours?

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Comments

  1. The Dark Lady said on July 9, 2023 at 11:19 am
    Reply

    Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.

    Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

    For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.

    You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.

    If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.

  2. KeZa said on August 17, 2023 at 5:58 pm
    Reply

    AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI

  3. Database failure said on August 18, 2023 at 5:21 pm
    Reply

    Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.

    Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.

  4. Howard Pearce said on August 25, 2023 at 12:24 pm
    Reply

    Don’t tell me!

    Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!

    Bring in the dictatorship!!!

    And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe

  5. Howard Allan Pearce said on September 7, 2023 at 9:13 am
    Reply

    GateKeeper ?

    That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!

    But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!

  6. owl said on September 7, 2023 at 9:50 am
    Reply

    @The Dark Lady,
    @KeZa,
    @Database failure,
    @Howard Pearce,
    @Howard Allan Pearce,

    Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.

    The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
    Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
    As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
    How to display only articles by a specific author:
    Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033

    By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
    RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
    >> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme

  7. Anonymous said on September 14, 2023 at 6:41 pm
    Reply

    We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.

  8. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:31 pm
    Reply

    “Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”

    Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.

  9. sean conner said on September 27, 2023 at 6:21 am
    Reply

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