Facebook strengthens its search engine

California: Facebook is a very successful social network compared to others, and one of the prime reasons is it has been evolving over the time. Its timely tweaks and additions have helped the company engage users for over longer period of time, and also monetise. However, this has also led the social network to receive a lot of flak over certain decisions, privacy being one of them.

Now, what looks like a stepping stone towards becoming a search engine, Facebook has announced to make two trillion posts public. Yes, Facebook Search is being updated to quickly find out what others are saying on topics that matter to you. When Facebook says it will pull out all relevant posts, it could also mean some of your embarrassing or personal posts that you may have accidentally posted under ‘Public’ settings will be made visible. To avoid this, users now need to take some precautions. Let’s take a look at what you need to do to avoid your personal posts from going public:

Future posts

Under Privacy Settings and Tools, there is a section called future posts. It is important that the settings don’t show public, which would mean anyone on or off Facebook can see the post. This option would be great if you are managing a business page, but not really ideal for personal posts. It is important to remember that many people take to Facebook to vent out their anger or emotions, which maybe momentarily, needless to say, emotions are subject to change according to the situation.

Limit old posts

While it’s possible to change your posting habits or keep a tab on what you post in the future, you may have forgotten about some not-so-appealing post from the past. You surely don’t want an old post to suddenly pop-up that is either embarrassing, too personal for public viewing or something that could possibly get you into serious trouble. It is important to opt for the ‘Limit Old Posts’ option. Under Privacy Settings and Tools, you will find this option that will let you limit past posts.

With this tool, all the content that you’ve shared on your timeline with friends, friend’s friends or public will change to Friends. All of this can be done with a single click. However, reverting back isn’t possible with a single click and one will have to manually make changes to every post.

Re-checking for privacy and content

You can also go back and do a thorough security and privacy check over your older posts. Maybe, some should be made viewable ‘only by you’.

While any like or comment on an older post will be indicated to the user, however, how many of you are really aware of the changes Facebook announces every other day? The changes aren’t explicitly mentioned to every user, and not everyone digs into the long list of terms and conditions for privacy every other day. So, it is important to opt for the most secure settings when it comes to privacy at Facebook.

Courtesy: firstpost.com