When we are talking about viewing hidden photos of any user on Facebook, it sort of feels creepy, right? Picturebook, a new Chrome extension on the web store, claims to enable anyone to “view hidden photos of anyone on Facebook.” While this description might be true technically, there’s nothing much to worry about if you read this article through.
Facebook View Hidden Photos – does the app work?
Karissa Bell of Mashable says the app’s description is “misleading” and that no app or browser extension can change anyone’s privacy settings. So what does this extension exactly do? Well, basically it tries to find the photos users hid from their Timelines–those which can still be viewed by other users, provided their privacy settings allows them to do so.
For example, if you’ve been to some place and your friends may upload a picture onto Facebook and tag you. So to hide it, you might select the “Hide from my timeline” option. But what really happens is that Facebook will only hide that photo from the Timeline and will not remove it.
Facebook View Hidden Photos – loophole
Other users can still view the photo by visiting your friends’ Timelines. So what Picturebook does is that it takes advantage of this loophole on Facebook and searches for photos that you have been tagged in, regardless of whether users have hidden it or not. Facebook does point out that every time we try to hide a photo, it will still be viewable via others’ news feed, searches and other places.
If you really want to tackle this situation, then you should first untag yourself from the photo by selecting “Hidden from timeline” from the drop-down menu. Next select the “Report/remove tag” option from the popup window, and then finally, click on the “Remove tag” button.
By doing this, your photo will no longer be visible on your Timeline or through the Picturebook extension. However, it will still appear on your friends’ Timeline, as only the person who posted the photo can delete it from Facebook.
