Activated the Facebook timeline? Now everyone can see your old private conversations.

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Snytbaggen

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Read it on a Swedish forum, and it's true and very bad. View the profile of a friend that has the timeline and go down to around 2009-ish. There should be a field that says "Friends" and "x friends has made entries to [friend]'s timeline", and those "entries" are actually private chat messages from the persons to your friend. It's onesided, but still a big fuckup by Facebook. I'm glad I never activated that timeline. I haven't seen a new article about this yet, but if one pops up I'll add it to the OP. I hope it's okay to write the instructions here, if it's not I'll remove them. Searched, mock, lock etc.

EDIT: False alarm. Apparently it's just old wall posts that look like private posts because of this:


Duane Cunningham said:
Hey, just so you all remember, prior to somewhere in 2008-09, there were no comments on wall posts. People still had conversations "MySpace" style, where you post on somebody's wall, then they respond on yours, back and forth. So things that LOOK like a one sided conversation on your own timeline actually are wall posts, just ones where you can't see your half of the conversation, because it was done on the other person's wall.

Not saying that there isn't also some PM malfunction going on, but I just looked at my timeline from back then, and thought for a minute I had it too, then I realized it was just fragments of conversations from the old school way of talking on FB.
Click to expand...

Mock me as needed.
 
Hmm... this is true. I just checked my timeline. Scrolled down to 2009, and thought everything was normal, and then I started seeing PM messages that are treated like wall posts. It was mixed in with a bunch of messages that were saying things like happy birthday. Look carefully. It was in a section titled 46 friends posted on Eggo's timeline.
 
Yea, not many people in my friendslist have timeline. I don't. And I'm actually surprised many people don't like it.
 
Eggo said:
Hmm... this is true. I just checked my timeline. Scrolled down to 2009, and thought everything was normal, and then I started seeing PM messages that are treated like wall posts. It was mixed in with a bunch of messages that were saying things like happy birthday. Look carefully. It was in a section titled 46 friends posted on Eggo's timeline.
Click to expand...

Yea Im seeing this too. I dont have timeline but Im looking at a few others and there are definitely some mixed in it would seem. Could be mistaken though.

Edit: Or maybe not. Who knows. I hope this gets out so people will panic and I can have a laugh.
 
I've only activated timeline on my work account which is only a year old or so. But now I'll know not to do it on my personal one.
 
Eggo said:
Hmm... this is true. I just checked my timeline. Scrolled down to 2009, and thought everything was normal, and then I started seeing PM messages that are treated like wall posts. It was mixed in with a bunch of messages that were saying things like happy birthday. Look carefully. It was in a section titled 46 friends posted on Eggo's timeline.
Click to expand...
No you don't, you're mistaken.

jvalioli said:
How can you tell the difference between a wall post and a private message?
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The latter don't appear on the wall (or, now, timeline).
 
Yeah, I see some of this. It's personal messages people have sent me in chat, mixed in with actual wall posts, or something like that. Freaky.

Thanks for letting me know.
 
Sage00 said:
No you don't, you're mistaken.
Click to expand...

I should know what was a PM and what was a wall post. Others are seeing it too. I've even checked a friend's page and see things that read more like a PM than a wall post, where people sign their name.
 
Hey, just so you all remember, prior to somewhere in 2008-09, there were no comments on wall posts. People still had conversations "MySpace" style, where you post on somebody's wall, then they respond on yours, back and forth. So things that LOOK like a one sided conversation on your own timeline actually are wall posts, just ones where you can't see your half of the conversation, because it was done on the other person's wall.

Not saying that there isn't also some PM malfunction going on, but I just looked at my timeline from back then, and thought for a minute I had it too, then I realized it was just fragments of conversations from the old school way of talking on FB.
 
Like a dumbass I changed to timeline, yeah you can see all the private messages sent to you mixed in with other stuff. I dont really have anything to hide so no fucks are given...I imagine this will be bad for some girls I know.
 
Sage00 said:
The latter don't appear on the wall (or, now, timeline).
Click to expand...

I know what you're saying, but this was more my point:

Duane Cunningham said:
Hey, just so you all remember, prior to somewhere in 2008-09, there were no comments on wall posts. People still had conversations "MySpace" style, where you post on somebody's wall, then they respond on yours, back and forth. So things that LOOK like a one sided conversation on your own timeline actually are wall posts, just ones where you can't see your half of the conversation, because it was done on the other person's wall.
Click to expand...


I mean, the only way you'd be able to tell the difference would be if you remembered whether something was sent as a PM, but this is from 2009 so they'd have to have a pretty good memory.
 
Duane Cunningham said:
Hey, just so you all remember, prior to somewhere in 2008-09, there were no comments on wall posts. People still had conversations "MySpace" style, where you post on somebody's wall, then they respond on yours, back and forth. So things that LOOK like a one sided conversation on your own timeline actually are wall posts, just ones where you can't see your half of the conversation, because it was done on the other person's wall.
Click to expand...

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Guess I was a bit too quick to cry wolf this time.
 
jvalioli said:
I know what you're saying, but this was more my point:




I mean, the only way you'd be able to tell the difference would be if you remembered whether something was sent as a PM, but this is from 2009 so they'd have to have a pretty good memory.
Click to expand...

Aren't PMs in your...PM section?

I just cross-checked one and it didn't show up on my friend's or my timeline.
 
Eggo said:
I should know what was a PM and what was a wall post. Others are seeing it too. I've even checked a friend's page and see things that read more like a PM than a wall post, where people sign their name.
Click to expand...
Go check your PM inbox (it goes back to then, too) and find me a wall post which matches a PM. :P
 
Duane Cunningham said:
Hey, just so you all remember, prior to somewhere in 2008-09, there were no comments on wall posts. People still had conversations "MySpace" style, where you post on somebody's wall, then they respond on yours, back and forth. So things that LOOK like a one sided conversation on your own timeline actually are wall posts, just ones where you can't see your half of the conversation, because it was done on the other person's wall.

Not saying that there isn't also some PM malfunction going on, but I just looked at my timeline from back then, and thought for a minute I had it too, then I realized it was just fragments of conversations from the old school way of talking on FB.
Click to expand...

Just about to say this. People forget that Facebook has changed a lot in the last 4 years.
 
So... I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation for this, but I can't find one.

Why does visiting the Facebook homepage cause my external hard drive to turn on? It's the only website which does it as far as I've checked. Every time I visit the site the hard drive light flashes like it does when it's being accessed. If it's inactive, loading up FB makes it start spinning.

Edit: Just tested with a memory stick and FB doesn't access that.
 
Rekubot said:
Why does visiting the Facebook homepage cause my external hard drive to turn on? It's the only website which does it as far as I've checked. Every time I visit the site the hard drive light flashes like it does when it's being accessed. If it's inactive, loading up FB makes it start spinning.
Click to expand...

Facebook has begun to learn at a geometric rate.
 
The other thing is, are you using Facebook as another user and seeing these private messages, or are you logged in as yourself looking at your own timeline? I have a lot of private shit happening in my chats and I haven't seen any of it on my timeline as another user.
 
Until someone posts a screenshot where a timeline post exactly matches a post from their PM folder, this rumor is false.
 
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