PictureMate ( initially picturebook) is an extension for Google Chrome that lets you view hidden photos of your “friends” and your “friends” yours. Indeed, to the extent you can see the pictures of people who have not even added as friends on facebook. It means Users don’t have to be friends for PictureMate to work; you just install it and click when you’re looking at someone’s profile.
According to report PictureMate is rolled out as a Chrome extension on Monday. It’s the effort of Steven Goh, the developer behind the Javelin Browser for Android. The extension promises to “unblock and search for hidden pictures of anyone in Facebook.”
Say a friend tags you in an embarrassing photo. You can make it go away by selecting “hide from my timeline.” But this only stops people from viewing the photo within your timeline; it doesn’t in fact remove or block the photo in any way. If the photo’s privacy setting was set to “public”, anyone could have found it anyway.
Other users will still be able to see the photo by visiting your friend’s timeline, or simply by searching for it. PictureMate takes benefit of this loophole and surfaces photos you’ve been tagged in, in spite of of whether you’ve hidden them.
How to fix it:
- The only way to really hide your hidden photos from this tool is by untagging yourself. First, select “hidden from timeline” from the drop down menu under the photo’s date.
- From there, select “Report/remove tag” from the popup window that appears
- Then select “remove tag.”
This removes the tag, which will stop photos from showing on your timeline, or on the Picturebook extension.
