Why oh Why!

I've always understood social media like Facebook and Twitter to be a double-edged sword. Everything I post can bring out the best and worst in people and I need to be prepared for someone in my network to not like what I've posted and comment accordingly. I've always been quite thoughtful over what I post, I don't post personal information, I only publicise trips after the fact and I don't comment on sex, politics or religion. This has largely kept me on the safer side of things - but this is a reflection of my age and appreciation of the issues posting on social media can cause.

Younger generations have bigger problems with this than I do. The impetuous nature of youth means that often they post something that later will come back to haunt them, especially when it comes to pictures. What seems amusing at the time often is embarrassing after the fact and the sharing nature  of the internet means its difficult to hide what you've done after the fact.

So if you've posted something in a drunken haze and the cold light of day leaves you with a need to get rid of hide something, what are your options?

Facebook

Facebook tends to be the daddy when it comes to making those embarrassing mistakes that follow you around. Outside of manually removing every post, deactivating your account is the only way to get rid of your entire Facebook history. Mozilla users can access some add-ons that help with this.

Even then there are things you can't delete. Facebook logs a lot of data, like which adverts you've clicked and the IP addresses you've used to log into the site.

But what you can do is completely restrict who is able to see old content.

You can do this by limiting the privacy of your past posts through the settings tab. With one click of a button this privatises old photos from the times you were more relaxed about posting things. This doesn't actually delete any of your history, it just stops people seeing it.

The settings option can also allow you to view your profile, to see it as other people do, so you can see what friends might see. Remember to check the pages that you liked! There may be a few embarrassing ones in there. Events you are attending may be worth looking at too, especially if you're avoiding someone.

Through the privacy check button you can also see which apps use your Facebook account. This is very important. If you don't trust any of these apps with your data, don't give them access to your Facebook profile.  You can restrict what data it can access (you may not want to give them your address or phone number) by adjusting your app and game settings.

Twitter

It's a bit easier to remove old tweets. Twitter in general (As a company) has a better stance over removing content that other social networks. I sometimes feel that Twitter is more dangerous than Facebook because the velocity that Twitter moves at means that an unfortunate tweet can travel further quicker than other networks. A classic example is the tale of Justine Sacco - read her story here

You can delete old tweets from your timeline using TweetDelete

If you're particularly paranoid you can also set up a rolling auto-delete so that your old tweets are constantly deleted.

Instagram

There are no easy ways to delete old Instagram posts simultaneously but there are a few ways to keep your posts private and limited to yourself and approved friends.

You can change Instagram to "private" by going into the options (this won't affect the followers you have already) but you can also make sure you aren't geotagging your posts so that people can see where you are - or have been.

iOS phones can do this by going into the settings, then privacy, before selecting location services and then removing Instagram's permission to access your location by toggling it to off. It's also important to deselect "Add to Photo Map" before you share a photo.

Summary

There has never been a greater need to manage your on-line profile and persona. Your next job or relationship might depend on it. Its hard to hide those mistakes in the digital realms - so the better strategy would be to not make them in the first place. I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. You don't need the same t-shirt.