Seven tips to stop old Twitter and Facebook posts coming back to haunt you

Over the past few days, celebrities including YouTube personality Zoella and I’m a Celebrity’s Jack Maynard have been embarrassed by ancient social media posts.

But it’s not just famous people who can get in trouble over old posts with controversial opinions (or just embarrassing drunken photos).

Up to 70% of recruiters have turned people down due to controversial stuff which has shown up in web searches using their name, a Microsoft study found.

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Researchers at Queensland University of Technology found that 60% of employees believe they had rights to a private online identity – something that simply isn’t true.

In fact, bosses are free to look at all your social media accounts for the purpose of ‘monitoring’ – and the practice is pretty commonplace.

But is it really possible to get rid of everything which might be embarrassing?

Answer: yes, but it’s going to take some time and effort.

Delete embarrassing Tweets

You can search for and delete Tweets within Twitter itself: so, for instance, you could search for ‘drunk’, ‘hungover,’ ‘weed’ or other controversial search terms.

Use Twitter’s ‘Advanced Search’ to track down old, embarrassing Tweets, and kill them off (although you have to do this one by one).

Delete all your old Tweets in one go

If you want to take a more fire-and-the-sword approach and kill off all Tweets from a particular range of dates, use special tools.

Apps such as TweetEraser are free, work in your browser, and let you mass-delete Tweets from date ranges, or search through old Tweets, deleting them.

You’ll need to be logged in to Twitter, and authorise the app (choose the free version).

It’s a much quicker way to get rid of potentially dodgy old posts than relying on the tools built into Twitter itself.

You can also (if you’re feeling brave) simply delete all the Tweets you’ve ever done from an account.

Limit the audience of your old Facebook posts

Just because a Facebook post isn’t on your Timeline doesn’t mean it’s not visible – people can often find old Facebook posts via the site’s search function.

Go to Settings, Privacy then select ‘Limit Old Posts’ and set them all to ‘Friends’ (or if you’re really going for it, ‘Only Me’.

Anything that is shared with Friends of Friends is a privacy risk – you don’t know who your friends might be friends with.

It’s well worth taking the time to ensure every picture and post is at a privacy level that suits you.

Tighten up Facebook’s privacy settings

Facebook has introduced a ‘Privacy check-up’ which is a great place to start if you haven’t refreshed your settings in a while.

To see it, click the question mark icon in the top right in the desktop version, then select Privacy Check-Up.

You’ll be walked through sections for Your Posts, Your Apps and Your Information.

It’s best to set your posts to Friends, rather than Public – this means that people you don’t know can’t, for instance, share or see your photos.

It’s also best to restrict information such as your email address and phone number to ‘Only Me’.

Police your ‘Likes’

Your LIkes are actually very visible on Facebook, without even digging into your profile – and (depending on your privacy settings) can be searched.

So if you’ve liked a few racy or offbeat things in the past, it might be time to revisit your profile and remove them.

Humour sites on the web have used the search to highlight lists of people who use casual sex apps and are also listed as “married”.

Go to your profile, pick Activity Log, then pick ‘Likes’ from the menu. Delete any you wouldn’t want to be seen.

Get rid of the picture your mate tagged you in

If someone has posted a mortifying picture of you, there are steps you can take to limit who can see it.

You can complain to Facebook (this guide explains how) if the photo is abusive – but even if it’s just a bad picture, you can ensure it doesn’t appear on your Timeline.

If the picture’s just been posted, mouse over it, then select the down arrow from the right of the image.

Then select Report/Remove tags, then I Want to Untag myself. If it’s an older picture you’ve remembered, go to Activity Log (on your profile page, which you access by clicking your portrait in the top right of the main news feed), then go back through your posts to find it.

If you want to, delete or deactivate

From Facebook’s menus, it appears as if deactivating an account is the closest Facebook will let you get to deletion – but it’s actually possible to delete your account entirely.

First, save your information, by going to Settings, then the menu option, Download a copy of your Facebook data (below your General Account Settings), then Start My Archive.

A page with instructions on how to permanently delete your account is available here .

Once done, you have 14 days in which you can log back in and cancel the request, but after that point, there is no way to restore the data, and (crucially) people will not be able to search for or see your profile or any content you have shared on Facebook.

For a ‘softer’ option, ‘deactivating’ an account (found under Settings), lets you hide your protile and photos from Search, but the account can be reactivated, and some interactions (such as comments on other people’s pages) may still be visible.

Get rid of social media accounts you no longer use

There are now quite a few services which let you run through online communities you might have signed up for, offering instructions (and links) on how to delete your account.

JustDeleteMe is good. JustDeleteMe offers ratings on how easy it is to delete an account.

Some accounts are impossible to delete, though, even if you contact staff.

In these cases, try to edit your profile, where possible, inserting a different ‘throwaway’ email address, and inserting incorrect details for your name and contacts.