Facebook profiles could be hiding old, embarrassing information about users that anyone can see

It might be time to do a little audit, to save embarrassment

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 01 October 2015 10:06 BST
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought over Instagram in 2012 for $1.5bn
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought over Instagram in 2012 for $1.5bn (The Asahi Shimbun)

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Various parts of people’s Facebook pages could be holding very embarrassing information about them — and have been tucked away, hiding in plain sight.

Sections such as “Favourite Quotes”, which were once high-profile on the site, have been gradually moving to various unnoticed parts of it. And that means that they might act as a strange time capsule — holding a version of you from years ago that you haven’t updated.

There are a number of sections on Facebook . But Favourite Quotes is perhaps one of the most potentially embarrassing — given it was once a large part of the site but isn’t any more.

To see the Quotes About You section, head to your own profile and choose the “About” tab.

There, select “Favourite Quotes” and have a look through what’s written there.

Some of those fields used to be highly prominent on Facebook, and so you may once have carefully curated them. But as Facebook has been redesigned they have been moved away and gradually shunted out of sight — but not completely.

It might be worth having a complete look through all of those different parts of the profile. Facebook is continuing to change up its profiles — including, most recently, adding profile videos to replace profile photos — and so other sections might be hidden or resurface at any time.

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