How to use Facebook’s often overlooked privacy tool; View As
One privacy tool offered by Facebook that is often overlooked is the ability to look over your Facebook account as a specific person or a stranger.
It can be difficult to keep a check on all your different privacy settings since many of them are located at different parts of your Facebook account. As such it can be difficult to know if you’ve overlooked something that may result in information about you being accessible to people you don’t know.
This is where this handy tool comes in to play, since you can trawl your own Facebook account as a stranger, seeing exactly what they would be able to see if they clicked onto your Facebook account.
Using this tool is easy. On Facebook for desktop, simply navigate to your profile, click the … (three dots) icon on your cover photo and select View As. By default, this will reload your account through the eyes of a stranger.
When using this tool, we recommend checking up on several things –
Your photos. Select Photos and check what photos you’re tagged in appear on your timeline. Are your albums friends only? Are your old profile pictures and cover photos public? Any embarrassing photos you want to untag yourself or hide from your timeline? Remember, not all photos you’re tagged in may appear on your timeline, since you can hide photos from your timeline. If you want to see all photos you’re tagged in (or all photos you’re tagged in that are available to strangers) you need to head to your Activity Log.
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Your Personal Info. From your profile, click About and go through all the sections to see if any information about you is visible. Unless you have a specific exception, there is really no reason why any information about you here needs to be visible to the public.
Your Friends. From your profile, click Friends. Can you see your friends list? If so, we recommend hiding it so you don’t become a victim of a cloning scam.
Your timeline. Assuming your privacy settings are friends only, which of course they should be, the photos and posts you upload shouldn’t be visible on your timeline. However scroll down it and see what is visible. May be there is the odd post you’ve made that appears to have been made public. See what information your timeline displays, and if you see anything you don’t want the public to see, make sure you hide it!
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This privacy tool from Facebook is often overlooked by many, but we think it’s a really important tool and it’s once we routinely use every month or so to ensure our own accounts are locked down for optimal privacy.
Also read – 4 monthly privacy check-ups for your Facebook account.
For our ultimate guide to locking down your Facebook account, click here.