How to Hide or Limit Past Facebook Posts and Make Photo Albums Private

Facebook has had a knack for having privacy issues with personal profiles and it’s mostly due to their garbage default settings and users being unaware of platform updates and the visibility options available to them.

With each type of post having it’s own security setting, an average user doesn’t necessarily realize exactly what he/she is leaving visible to the prying eyes of the public (non-friend connections), including recruiters, strangers, and creepers.

Though Facebook does provide tools to limit past posts as well as providing an audience selector for photo albums, many are finding just how frustrating it can be to set these up correctly.

Thankfully, that’s what I’m here for!

This week’s #SocialMediaMinute will teach you how to change Facebook photos, posts, and albums to private.

SEE ALSO: Using Facebook View As to Check Privacy

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Watch the helpful minute-long social media tutorial video below for a full walk-through:

Video Tutorial:

How to Hide or Limit Past Facebook Posts and Make Photo Albums Private – #SocialMediaMinute

This social media tutorial will cover how to hide your past Facebook pictures from the public, changing photo albums privacy with audience selector, and limiting old Facebook posts

Watch the video on YouTube.

Limiting Old Posts

Facebook introduced an option in your Facebook profile privacy settings that allows you to Limit Old Posts. Before you confirm the changes to limit your old posts on your timeline, read the prompt fully:

“If you use this tool, content on your timeline you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public will change to Friends. Remember: people who are tagged and their friends may see those posts as well. You also have the option to individually change the audience of your posts. Just go to the post you want to change and choose a different audience.”

“You are about to limit old posts on your timeline without reviewing them. Note: This global change can’t be undone in one click. If you change your mind later, you’ll need to change the audience for each of these posts one at a time.”

Now this is supposed to hide all of your old Facebook posts from the public. But by using Facebook’s “View As” public function, you can see if it indeed has changed the settings for all of them. In my case it still left my timeline photos and albums visible to the public.

Facebook Album Privacy – Audience Selector

Many people have found that Facebook’s photo album privacy audience selector is not currently working as intended. You can hover over the cog but it cannot be clicked on to modify the setting.

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Here’s the work around and it’s done by using Facebook’s activity log. Now the trick here is to navigate to the “shared with” drop down and select “public” so you won’t have to sort through all your photos. This option will pull up photos you’ve been tagged in as well as the times you updated your cover photos which always appear as public.

You’ll want to select YOUR Facebook PHOTOS which allows you to conveniently change each of their privacy settings and hide them from the public. This can also be done with your post.

Remember: Your uploaded COVER PHOTOS will ALWAYS be PUBLIC and you will not be able to change that setting.

Finally, always check your work using the “view as public” function.

Takeaways

This is what you want. Remember that your cover photos will always be available for public viewing.

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It’s always a good idea to understand the type of information you have openly available to the public for any of your social media accounts.

In this instance, Facebook has taken some steps to help its users better protect themselves, however it’s important to educate yourself on the newest changes and to inform your friends (who may be tagging you) as well.

What other ways do you protect your privacy online? Comment below!