Want to Untag or Get a Post Removed From Facebook?

Sometimes people post things and tag your name in them. Other times you might come across spam, malware attempts or even a post so inappropriate that you feel Facebook needs to know about it.  Images of child pornography or rape come to mind for this latter issue.

Fortunately Facebook provides a way to deal with any and all of these situations. The steps are pretty much the same in all cases. Keep in mind, this post discuss how to handle things on other people’s Timelines. If you want to delete something from your own timeline, directions can be found here.

Step One – Find the Option on Facebook

When you first look at a post on someone else’s Facebook timeline, you won’t see the option to deal with it.

The solution to this is to hover your mouse on the upper right side of the post. When you do, you will see a star and a pencil. When you hover over the pencil , you will see some options.

The option to Hide from Timeline means you are just hiding the post from yourself, removing it from your own Timeline.  So this is how you deal with a post that is just annoying you, one you don’t want to look at any more.

However, if you want to take actual action, you need to click on Report/Remove Tag.  Don’t worry, there is another step involved, you won’t be reporting someone just by clicking on the option.

Once you click on Report/Remove Tag a window will pop up.

If you want to untag yourself, i.e. remove the connection to you from the post, then simply choose that option.  Otherwise choose the appropriate item and click on Continue.  Don’t abuse the option to report posts. Facebook employees spend a lot of time reviewing posts and it is better that we only report posts that really need to be removed. That way we don’t waste their time.