Facebook now shows you your own search history | Hacker News Reader

Facebook now shows you your own search history

16 pointsWilliamSt10 comments

If you go to your Activity Log and check the box that says "Include Only Me Activity", all your searches will be displayed. Personally, I'm scared I'll forget to log off my facebook account one day and that someone might get access to which of my friends profiles I've searched for. What are your opinions?

View on HN

This is actually several months old:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/21/3369878/facebook-saves-you...

> The default privacy setting for searches is "Only Me," and cannot be changed unlike the privacy toggles of other Activity Log entries. But, you can delete any searches you want to hide from yourself. The idea is to provide added context and transparency to using Facebook, as well as provide you with complete control over every single thing you do on the site, like searches — which apparently we're doing a lot of.

I don't see any searches, in fact the only thing that seems to change by clicking "Include only me activity" (and what is that even meant to mean?) is the query string in the URL.

I really wish everyone would switch to Google+, it's so much better.

Try to search for a friend using the search bar on your newsfeed. Then go back and look again.

"Include only me activity" means activities that are private. I.E. shared with only yourself

This is what you end up with — http://i.imgur.com/bmdVc.png

Not the most comforting feature they've ever introduced. Especially as it shows you your history previous to this point.

Hate it. What are our options for deleting/preventing this?

It seems like you are able to "remove" searches but you have to click on all of them manually, there's no "remove all search history"-functionality, at least that I was able to find. Searches seems to go back to september this year for me.

You can clear all of your searches in one click:

Activity Log >>> More (Under Comments) >>> Search >>> Clear Searches

they have been showing this for a couple months. I wasn't thrilled when I saw my history so now I don't do much searching. FB logs everything.

So does Google.. and probably a lot of other sites.. Amazon etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com