Facebook is most used social networking site at present time. Most of the persons are using it to keep themselves in touch with the outside world, their friends and colleagues. People love to share their feelings, pics, videos and much more on Facebook. But, do you know that sharing your pictures may be risky? Yes, sharing your profile picture on Facebook is not safe, even if your have set its privacy to you or your friends only. In this article, I am going to discuss only this security issue on Facebook images.
How Your Facebook Pictures are Not Secure?
- When a user uploads any image or post on Facebook, then he/she can control the privacy of that. But this privacy is limited to likes,comments and shares only. And hence these images are still visible to everyone. I will explain it later how any image can be seen by persons who are not allowed to watch it.
- When a user deletes any image uploaded on Facebook, it is not completely removed from the web and it may be seen even after deletion. See how:
How Facebook Pictures are Visible to Everyone?
In order to view an image, you have to follow the steps below :
- Open the image. Check the URL. It is like
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=xxxxxxxxxxx&set=yyyyyyyyy - Now, right click on the image and click at Copy image URL.
- Now, go to the new tab and paste the URL,which you have copied in the previous step and Enter. This link is like
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-tttt/@@@@@@@@@@@_n.jpg - Now, you can see the image without any option of like,comment and share and it is just the image.
- Now, this copied link may be given to a person, with whom this image is not shared. He/she can view the image.
- You can delete the photo from Facebook (link shown in point 1), but you will find this copied URL of the image still alive i.e. the image is no more on Facebook, but it is still on the web and someone having that link may visit and spread the image.
How to Secure Your Facebook Pictures?
- Don’t upload any such image which is very confidential and it should not be leaked.
- Another better way is if you want to show the image to a special person then send it via chat/message instead of uploading it. If it is sent via message, then it is deleted with the deletion of chat history.
NOTE: It is possible only if the copied link of the image is stored somewhere for future reference or shown particularly to a person. Otherwise, chances of image leaking are dependent on the security of the user’s account.