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Home / Business

Can Facebook feature reveal your online stalkers? Truth behind social media rumours

NZ Herald
27 Sep, 2017 09:29 PM2 mins to read

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This Facebook post is not all as it seems. Photo / Getty

This Facebook post is not all as it seems. Photo / Getty

Admit it, you'd secretly love to find out who has been stalking your profile.

A long lost friend? A secret admirer? A Tinder date that went wrong?

Rumours have been swirling that Facebook has a hidden section where you can look at everyone who is secretly stalking you.

News spread that there was a simple trick that would let you find out the names of strangers who had looked at your account through a "following me" section in the settings.

Different instructions were shared online which has freaked a number of people out.

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"If you go into your Account Settings then to Blocking [on left side of screen], then in the Blocked users search bar type in 'following me' without the quotes, you might be startled by who is following you," one example reads.

"Unfortunately, you have to block them one at a time, which is annoying. I had 20 in the list and knew none of them. I blocked all of them. You might share or copy/paste if you found this helpful".

This might scare some people, but there is nothing to be afraid of. Photo / Facebook
This might scare some people, but there is nothing to be afraid of. Photo / Facebook

But rest assured, this is much less sinister than it seems.

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But what you're actually seeing is a list of people with names that include letters from the words "following" and "me."

When Facebook conducts a search of public profiles that best fit what you've typed into the search bar, they are the most relevant.

While there's still no way of knowing everyone who's looked at your profile, you can control what your followers see by selecting settings, clicking public posts, then selecting friends or public next to "who can follow me".

Early this year a rumour spread that Facebook security "officials" were being paid to watch individual accounts.

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