Going ghost on facebook

Kilroyquasar

Kilroyquasar

4 seconds, inhale; 4 seconds, exhale.
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Hello!

since August, i have stopped logging in to facebook to check updates & posts. however, i now wish to check updates on a few groups that am a member of, as well as join a few more. but i don't want to leave any footprint for my friends or/and acquaintances to notice, as i want to avoid any usual useless liking-chatting-sharing crap with them. to that end, i checked the privacy settings, and in that, there's this option of selecting who you don't want to see your posts. however, it seems i will have to manually type and select the names of all my 160 or so contacts in that list. isn't there any way to to do this in one go? also, any other settings/options by which i could go complete ghost to my contacts (other than the groups)?

thanks!

EDIT: also checked the 'friends' page, and therein, one could select if he wants to put any friend into any other list, like 'restricted'. by doing so, your posts won't be visible to him, unless you make your posts public. however, if i were to post in a group, is it possible that only the group members see it, and not my friends, whom i've put to the 'restricted' list, even if the group is open? i presume then that my friends won't be able to see my posts, but any other facebookiya outside of my contacts would be able to see them, as its an open group; that i certainly don't mind.
 
it's really difficult to go ghost in fb. you may leave footprint one or other way. my advice is to create a new account.

Can you show me where is that setting which lets hiding posts from my contact list? may be I can write a script which will put all your contacts with a single click.

Regarding second question, your posts won't be visible to your friends. However your friends of friends can see those. But if someone tags you in a comment or mentions you by full name, that post will be visible to your friends and they can easily guess your account is active.

check these links to get started. You will get many results if you Google 'Facebook stealth mode'
 
avi said:
it's really difficult to go ghost in fb. you may leave footprint one or other way. my advice is to create a new account.

Can you show me where is that setting which lets hiding posts from my contact list? may be I can write a script which will put all your contacts with a single click.
Click to expand...

yes, in hidsight, even am feeling that creating a new account solely for the purpose i stated in my OP would be much better! i had earlier read that some members use this 'trick' to browse their groups on facebook without letting their contacts know about it.

there is no setting to make your posts invisible to your list of contacts, but the setting i wrote of in my OP's edit was, to go to your profile, click on the 'friends' section, and beside each of your contacts, you will see the button named 'friend', with a tick on it, implying that the contact is in your friends-list. upon hovering your cursor over that button, you will see an option in the menu that appears as --> add to another list. click that, and there is this 'restricted' option, and clicking/checking that puts your specific contact to your restricted list. now when you wish to post anything, before publishing it, you may choose to not share your post with that 'restricted list', by going to the post-sharing option beneath the post-box ('don't share this with' --> type 'r', 'restricted list' appears in the box, save).
but for this, you will have to manually put each contact in your friends-list/section to the restricted list. may be there's some greasemonkey script that could do this for you, or like you wrote (appreciate your offering assistance; thanks!), you could create a script to do that, but after thinking over, creating a new profile indeed seems to be a much lesser hassle in comparison, so let's leave the above-mentioned dreary labour aside.

avi said:
Regarding second question, your posts won't be visible to your friends. However your friends of friends can see those. But if someone tags you in a comment or mentions you by full name, that post will be visible to your friends and they can easily guess your account is active.

check these links to get started. You will get many results if you Google 'Facebook stealth mode'
Click to expand...

friends of friends seeing my posts won't be an issue (plus, there is the option of not sharing your posts with friends of friends too!), but yes, that tagging-thing will be irksome! will have to see if there's any privacy-setting to counter that or not; or again, best, create a new profile instead! :D

thanks for the links! found many more pages as well worth reading, upon googling 'facebook stealth mode' & similar terms. :)
 
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Your SETUP:
  • Use TOR (or a VPN)
  • Use Disconnect + Adblock Plus (or similar comparable setup to block cookies and tracking)
Now while you are in SETUP:
  • Sign-up for a new email account
  • Sign-up for a new Facebook account
  • Do whatever you want but always inside the SETUP
That's how you come close to achieving "no footprint" on Facebook.
 
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