Almost everyone has a story of getting burned (or knowing someone who was burned) by a posting on Facebook. Today I highlight “FaceWash,” a tool that will scour through you Facebook timeline to find content that may be inappropriate or you would want to remove. It will look through status updates, photos you have posted, photos you are tagged in, and comments on your wall.
The tool was surprisingly fast and searched through content at lightning speed. You can use its default “dirty word” list and even make your own (want to remove all traces of your ex, or a bad comment about your boss?). I did find its word list to be a bit overly sensitive. For example, a “Like” I had made on a local college production of the Vagina Monologues was flagged as was an article I “Liked” about Breast Cancer.
If you use Facebook professionally or just want to ensure that nothing on there is incriminating, check out FaceWash. It’s an excellent, free application.
I had no idea this was a free resource. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I hope it is easy to use for Luddites like me.
It only requires that you hit start.
If I self-destruct upon hitting the start button, it is your fault. 🙂
You can text me 😉
I just did it to my profile. Not terrible! Kinda cool. Gonna share it!
Pretty cool. Just did it and my profile wasn’t too bad. Just a few “dirty” words. Nothing worth changing. But I think this is cool and I’m gonna share it!
I would have a couple of big questions before I used this service, and there doesn’t appear to be much information on their website. In order for this service to work, you have to accept their Facebook “app” which gives them access to all of your Facebook information (including your Facebook friends and address book if you’ve included things like phone numbers and addresses). What do they do with that information? Most companies now have some sort of statement about whether they’ll sell your information on or share it with other companies, but I can’t find any statement like that on their website. There doesn’t seem to be any Terms of Service or Privacy Statement on their site. Also, when they troll through the contents of your entire profile, does a copy of that data get stored on their servers? Are you giving them permission to use your data in any way by agreeing to use their services?
It just seems odd to me that the creators have included their Twitter accounts but there is no way to contact them directly through any kind of email.
Color me suspicious.
All excellent points Colin, especially for users that are privacy conscious.
Just thinking that maybe some privacy statement or TOS pops up once you start the process – did you see anything like that when you tried it?
I just removed and added the app again to see if it did. Alas, basic app info – that it can access this content. It cannot, however, add posts (no spam). I sent a tweet to the developers. We’ll see their response.
The app has been endorsed by a variety of tech writers, but no mention of privacy issues.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414591,00.asp
http://www.geekosystem.com/new-facewash-app-facebook/
Just heard back from the developers. They say that they do not currently store your data.
Camden Fuller states: