Want to ensure your Facebook past doesn’t come back to bite you?
There’s an app for that.
Job hunting earlier this year, programmer Michael Devine realized his status updates might not garner the same chuckle from his potential employers as they would his friends on Facebook. So he built Exfoliate, an Android app that lets you clear your past on Facebook.
The app lets you choose a timeframe (older than three months, six months, etc.) and the kinds of things you want to clear (wall, posts, comments, likes.) Then after plugging away for a few hours—voilà, it gives you a clean Facebook slate.
Calling it the “ultimate break-up tool,” Devine told CNET that after a certain point, he believes there is little reason to leave anything on Facebook. “It just sits there waiting for someone to see it out of context and then it can cause you trouble.”
This might be a reasonable view, but it’s not something with which Facebook agrees. A few weeks ago, it announced Timeline, a revamp of its profiles which lets you do exactly that—go back and dig into people’s pasts. Timeline has yet to be rolled-out large scale, but when it does, the Facebook pasts of many will be easier to see than ever before.
The app sells on Android for $2.99, and Devine says an iPhone version is due in a few weeks.
Photo by queercatkitten