Formerly known as FaceWash, SimpleWash allows you to scour your Facebook page for inappropriate photos or posts and scrub it clean. And yes, the puns are intended. SimpleWash is the brainchild of a few students at Kent State—and it works exactly as it sounds. Using SimpleWash, it’s as simple as can be to search for and eliminate unwanted posts or photos from your page, creating what the app calls a more “professional social life.”
Want to give it a try? Simply head to the SimpleWash website and log in using your Facebook credentials. Once you give the app permission to access your News Feed, SimpleWash will scan your profile for questionable content.
Results are served in several categories: wall posts, tagged photos, your photos, liked photos, status updates, and liked pages. SimpleWash will highlight the words that activated the flag. For example, two of my photos triggered the app because of the words “beer” and “smoke”:
There’s no denying SimpleWash is effective—but the results might make you smile, too. One of my photo captions included the word “crack,” which prompted a red flag from SimpleWash. The caption, though, couldn’t be more inocuous: “Sneaking a peek into the nursery through a crack in the blinds. Andy thought we were mental.”
If you don’t want to rely on the app’s list of potentially offensive words or content, you can create your own list of words that you think may connect to questionable Facebook content. It works like a tag system; just type in different words separated by commas and SimpleWash will create your list.
It’s worth taking SimpleWash for a spin—if nothing else, think of it as an abbreviated walk down Facebook memory lane. And if you’re actively looking for a new job or seeking new clients, you may want to run SimpleWash so that you can remove any potentially compromising information that might harm a future opportunity. Of course, this seems like an opportune time for a universal reminder that nothing you put on the Internet is ever really gone, so be careful what you post.
The word on the interwebz is that the SimpleWash team is working on a similar app for Twitter—we’ll keep you posted and let you know when it’s available. In the meantime, let us know if you give SimpleWash a try and if you remove anything from your Facebook page as a result!
Image: Arlington County via Compfight cc