From time to time we all think about leaving platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However before we leave we want to make sure we aren’t losing anything in the process but how do we go about doing that? This article will run through some simple but effective approaches to help you capture and retrieve as much of your personal information as possible.
When it comes to retrieving your Facebook data there are a few different ways to get your data. Unfortunately Facebook don’t make it easy to get a copy of everything you have ever put up there and if you want everything you will need to put in a personal data request and from what we hear that can take months for a response. Officially if you are based in Europe they should be responding within 40 days to your request however history already shows this hasn’t been the case in the past.
In the meantime what you can do to retrieve a lot of your personal data is download digi.me and connect to Facebook to synchronize and retrieve the majority of your personal data. This will provide you with your wall posts and images direct to your computer and you can export these into an easy to use PDF. To gain access to our private messages you will need to “download a copy of your Facebook Data” which you will find on Facebook under settings. The list of what you will get with this download can be found here and it does include your private messages.
Again with Twitter you can use digi.me to automatically download your tweets as you go which will save you time and effort having to regularly remember to download your archive to keep up with your latest twitter updates. As Twitter limits the amount of time you can go back historically we recommend that you also download your Twitter archive so that you have all your really old Twitter content. That way you will have all your Twitter updates that you have ever created to date and all the ones you generate in from when you start using digi.me onwards will also be captured. There are some very comprehensive instructions from Twitter on how retrieve your Tweet archive here.
Digi.me also works with LinkedIN to help you keep copies of your most recent interactions on the social network. However you may also wish to put in a request to gain access to every update you have ever made on LinkedIN through their access request page. They do collect information about your search history and much more. You will be surprised just what this social network really knows about you and your data.
The other useful feature that you may wish to take advantage of within LinkedIN is the ability to export your profile as a PDF. It is a great starting point for putting together your CV and is a fairly well hidden feature. There is a little down arrow next to “View Profile As” when you are on your profile page. Click on the arrow and you will find a drop down with a few different options including the option to “Save to PDF”.
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