Can you miss something that you never knew you had? Interesting thought. Perhaps the more pertinent question might be whether or not you know that Facebook is in the process of changing its Data Use Policy, and the fact that you had – yes, had – a say in the matter.
Back in June, Facebook gave its 900 million users the chance to vote on various different privacy policies that were being touted for implementation. The voter turnout was pretty appalling. Roughly 1 in every 2,600 users bothered to weigh in on the issue – falling hugely short of the 30% of users required to vote for the results to be binding to Facebook.
So the news yesterday was that Facebook has said it would let users comment on proposed changes to the governing documents, but they will not be able to vote. This seems to have rankled quite a few users. As one leading tech website wrote:
“The world’s largest virtual nation, a billion citizens strong, just officially became an oligarchy.”
So the next time Facebook wants to change its privacy or sharing settings, there will be no democratic obstacles stopping the changes coming into effect. But what can you do about the way Facebook collects and uses your data?
Well, the first thing you need to do it take control of your Facebook data. You might want to delete something from Facebook, but not delete it from your own records. More and more people are looking for a way to download their Facebook Timeline and other account content. SocialSafe allows you to take control of your Facebook content in a way that other backup services do not.
By backing up your Facebook account to your own machine and having that data available in a journal that you can browse and search through, you are free to delete some of the original content from the social network itself. This means that you can remove private and sensitive posts, photos, messages etc from a place where the privacy settings may change without the consent of the content creators.
To see how SocialSafe gives you the opportunity to take control of your Facebook content, try the full version of the app for free for 60 days. Visit the SocialSafe website to download your free trial now.
How is this different from just downloading your Facebook data yourself, from Facebook’s “Account Settings” menu?
Hi Paul,
You can of course use Facebook’s own download function from the Account Settings menu. However, you have to wait for them to package your data into a .zip file and email it to you. It’ll likely be a large file that you have to download, and you cannot simply get the new content each time – you have to take it all or none at all. With SocialSafe, after the initial download, you run incremental syncs only bringing down new information You can also choose which aspects you’d like to back up.
But the major difference is what you can do with this data. SocialSafe presents it to you in a beautiful journal that allows you to browse and search all of your content, as well as viewing it as a diary. Comments, tags and likes are also downloaded and attached to all your wall posts, updates, photos etc, so you get the whole experience.
The .zip file that Facebook email to you might contain the same information as your SocialSafe journal, but it’s how that data is presented and how you are able to view it that separates the two backups.
But as they say, the proof is in the pudding – download the 60 day free trial of SocialSafe and see for yourself how it is different from Facebook’s own backup. There’s no obligation at the end of the trial and no need to enter any payment information to download it. Simply try SocialSafe for 60 days, and if you don’t like it at the end of your trial period then you have lost nothing!
You can download the free trial for PC/Mac from http://socialsafe.net or from the blue buttons at the top right of this page.
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on this blog, I hope you give the free trial a go and see value in what we’ve created here.
– Andrew
I have been using Social Safe free facebook download, I’m enjoying the fact that I can save what people post on my wall
Does SocialSafe have the ability to delete chat history content?
Hi Henri,
SocialSafe cannot make any changes to the make up of your existing Facebook Timeline/account. But on of the things that it does do is give you the opportunity to download your own copy of the data found online. This means you can then manually delete things from Facebook (depending on what the site itself allows you to remove) without them disappearing completely.
Does that answer your question?
Thanks for reading our blog and taking the time to leave a comment.
Andrew