A Really Simple Way To Double-Check How Private Your Facebook Really Is

At the beginning of the new year, Facebook will revamp its privacy policy to make it even easier to set parameters for who can see each individual post you make on the social network.

In the meantime, it might be wise to do a little check-up. This weekend, a couple of friends and I were discussing our own profiles and how private they were. One friend mentioned that he made a point to occasionally logout of his Facebook and search for himself so he could check exactly what information was publically available.

Turns out, there's an easier way than logging out.

I actually thought that my Facebook was completely private until I used this feature to double-check and realized that several old photo albums I had uploaded could be viewed by anyone who searched for me. Not cool.

This isn't a new trick, but could be especially helpful as we enter the season of (potentially wild) holiday parties. Don't let yourself unintentionally over-share!

Here's how to easily check how private your profile is.

Navigate to your own profile and then click the three dots next to "View Activity Log":

From there, click "View As":

You can then see exactly what people who aren't friends with you will have access to if they find you on Facebook. Or, you can check what specific people can see (for example, if you're friends with an old boss, you can view your profile from their perspective and double-check that they're only seeing exactly what you want them to):

Not happy? Now you know to go and adjust your privacy settings. If you haven't already done it, you'll see that there's an option to limit all of your old posts at once so only your friends can see them. I used this to fix the problem with my accidentally-public albums: