Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline.

Is the quickest option a manual delete? She is freaking out.

Edit: I have set her privacy as strict as I can for now, but having pressed her on the topic, it isn't entirely certain that these messages were ever private.

My comment to her was that even if they were always on your wall, you (in hindsight) don't think they should have been. Don't let Facebook convince you that you are wrong to have thought differently. Facebook's model doesn't work like the arrow of time, memories and conversations don't fade out naturally and disappear, they just stay there permanently. And today, your present self wonders what you were thinking that made you post that. When you add that to the fact that your social graph on Facebook was different 5 years ago than it is today, it makes sense that you naturally think certain things should have been private.

In other words, you weren't fit in 2006 to know what in 2012 you would regret having posted and you aren't fit in 2012 to know what you are going to regret in 2018.

If you really are freaking out about stuff that your past self thought should be known to the world, then do your future self a favor and stop putting your life on Facebook.

quickest way to hide all of your friend's posts on your wall http://cl.ly/image/0s1e093Q0s1m

If FB shows in-network content to people who joined after the content was posted, that is a severe privacy violation.

Had the same problem as well. About 10-15 private messages were shown on my timeline form 2008-2009. I've hid my timeline so only I can see it for right now until it's fixed. Seems like an quicker /easier than deleting the messages.

Same thing here, I'm French and lots of my friends are having the bug as well. Lots of mention in the online newspaper too. I think once it's obvious that it's real, it's going to be a big deal for Facebook...