Facebook has launched another new search tool, Graph Search, within its site this week. As always with Facebook, this new feature can affect your privacy settings. Graph Search allows users to search Facebook to get consolidated results based on the words or phrases searched just as they would on Google or Bing. If the user information is not private, their info will be pulled up in the search. For instance, if a user searches for women in blue dresses, all the women with blue dresses text or photos on the Facebook pages will be generated and accessible to the user whether they are friends or not. If you prefer to remain private and not be searchable to everyone in the Facebook community, here are a few suggestions to make sure your profile is protected and you remain private.
Once you are logged into your Facebook, click on the lock in the upper right hand corner of the screen and you will see the box above appear. Click on “Who can see my stuff?” and make the changes according to who you want to allow to see your page.
You can also change and limit your past post, likes, photos, comments, etc. from this box.
Click on the “Use Activity Log” to see all of your FB activity. The activity log shows any and all activity from what you have posted to what you have searched for on your account. Each post listed will have an icon beside it that tells you how it was shared (friends, friends of friends or public). Unfortunately, there is only one way to get rid of all the items that are public and that is to delete each one. If your friends page or any other page that you have liked or commented on a post or photo is public, then anything you add to that page will also be public.
You should go through this entire page including “photos you tagged in” and “post by others.” If you don’t want certain photos visible to certain people on Graph Search, you can always un-tag yourself. For photos and other things you were tagged in, you can alter the group of people (“Public,” “Friends,” “Only Me”) who can see them from this page as well.
