How to See Images From Facebook Using the FBID Number (4 Steps)
By Micah McDunnigan
The amount of content on Facebook grows by leaps and bounds every single day. Just because you see an image you like on the social network site does not mean there will be any easy way to find it again through Facebook's user interface. Facebook assigns an identification number, or a FBID, to every piece of content users post on the site. If you know the FBID for the image you want to see, you can create a URL that tells Facebook to fetch and load the image for you.
Step 1
Sign into your Facebook account.
Step 2
Delete everything after "www.facebook.com/" in your Web browser's address bar.
Step 3
Type "photo.php?fbid=" after the "/" in your address bar, then then the FBID number after the "=" symbol.
Step 4
Press the "Enter" key to load the image.
References
Tips
- An image's FBID is the number between "FBID=" and "&set" in your address bar when viewing the image. Everything after the FBID in your address bar is extra session information about the context in which your Facebook account is viewing the image.
Warnings
- Looking up an image by its FBID is not a way to get around Facebook's privacy settings. If the user that put the image on Facebook uploaded it with a privacy setting that would prevent your account from seeing it in normal browsing, Facebook will still prevent you from seeing it if you look it up by its FBID.
- Using an image's FBID to find it won't produce the image if the user who uploaded it has since deleted the image. Using the FBID in your address bar simply replicates the normal process of pulling up an image through Facebook's interface, it is not a short cut directly into the social networking site's databases.
Writer Bio
Micah McDunnigan has been writing on politics and technology since 2007. He has written technology pieces and political op-eds for a variety of student organizations and blogs. McDunnigan earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the University of California, Davis.