Facebook’s New Timeline, A Biggest Change

The things you share on Facebook have always been stored on the site, but it used to take a lot of
patience and determination for someone to uncover every single post you’ve made over the years. Now, all that will change with the Timeline, a scrollable list that surfaces all kinds of things about you that you might have forgotten even exist. Things other people have posted about you or tagged you in will also become visible in a whole new way. This should concern you because it allows people access to a much more detailed, granular record of your life—which could potentially be misused. For example, while your old photos were always visible, they’ll now be presented alongside all your old status updates and conversations with friends, which is a level of detail you might not want to have your newest colleagues at work seeing. You might even be comfortable with certain friends having access to that kind of “scrapbook” of your life, but if their accounts are ever shared or compromised, there’s no telling who else might see everything.
Moreover, if there’s anything that might embarrass you (old party pictures, offensive statements made in jest), you’d better start cleaning up right away!