Hiding your photos on Facebook doesn’t make them go away

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Have you ever woken up in the morning to find unpleasant photos from the night before tagged on Facebook visible for all your friends and family to see?

If no, consider yourself one of the lucky few. For all the other people out there, I come bearing some not-so-great news. They’re still circulating the infinite multiverse that is the internet. Yes, I know you’re aware that simply hiding the photo from your timeline does not delete it from existence. But what if I told you this, there’s an app that allows people to actively search through your hidden photos, even if you’re not Facebook friends.

It’s called Picturebook it’s a Chrome extension that was recently launched. It’s every stalkers dream, though not as creepy as they let off. People you are not friends with may only see that photo if the person who’s uploaded it allows it in their privacy settings, so there’s that. For your Facebook friends however, it’s free game- it was always there to be found.

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Here’s how it works:

It’s got a lot to do with privacy settings, essentially if the photo is there to be seen, it’s going to get found. Picturebook merely finds the photos that are hidden from the standard search tool.

It finds the user’s unique Facebook ID and then uses is to find photos uploaded of this person. There isn’t really any way around this except disabling other people from tagging you in the photo in the first place. You can also untag the photo by selecting “Report/remove tag”, then selecting “remove tag”- this will keep you safe from Picturebook, however, the photo will still be visible unless the person who posted it removes it.

The lesson here is, maybe it’s time to update your privacy settings to avoid some not so flattering photos from your past being discovered by people who shouldn’t be seeing them.

via The Daily Dot

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