With all the fuss about the new Facebook Graph Search that’s being rolled out, you may be wondering how this will affect your privacy.
In my last post, I explained how to help your business Facebook Page get found in the new Graph Search. Today I’ll show you how to lock down your personal information so you don’t show up unexpectedly…
Searches like “Restaurants in Widnes liked by my friends” are not my idea of fun, but there is no accounting for taste. People live their lives on Facebook!
All that information – your jobs, relationships, your photos, status updates and likes sit quietly in Facebook’s database ready to be searched.
Scary thought eh?
Before you get thoroughly embarrassed by people resurfacing photos of you at the office party or checking in at the local nightclub the day before you called in sick – take some time to understand your privacy with Facebook Graph Search.
How Privacy Works with Facebook Graph Search
In the video, lovely lady called Julia walks you through how Facebook’s Graph Search can affect your privacy and how to adjust your settings.
How To Update Your Facebook Privacy Settings
To access who can see your updates, click on the padlock at the top right then “see more settings”.
Here you will be able to adjust who can see your updates by default and who can search for you by name or email address. Change the settings to your personal preference.
If you have made changes to your privacy settings, you can choose to apply those changes to older posts by clicking “limit past posts”
Of course, if others have already tagged you in updates and photos they will not be affected. You can remove tags or ask for updates to be removed by clicking on “use activity log” and then posts you are tagged in on the left menu
Yes, that is going to get boring very fast scrolling through those posts and removing tags!
For future tags, you can change your settings to approve tagged updates before they show on your timeline. Go back to the padlock and more settings. This time select Timeline and Tagging from the right side menu.
Switch the review posts friends tag you in setting to ON.
The best privacy protection is not to post anything you don’t want surfacing online, online in the first place…
Over to you…
Are you worried about your privacy with Facebook Graph Search? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments
Understand Your Privacy With Facebook Graph Search by Jan Kearney
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Thanks very useful. I think the search feature, overall, looks great but am braced for an avalanche of copied and pasted warnings from people on my timeline. This kind of post will go some way towards educating people about what they can do.
I’ll be honest, the search isn’t my cup of tea. But anything Facebook does with search can only be an improvement! I thought I’d get in before the masses of warning status updates about privacy lol Thanks for popping in, Ginny 🙂
Hi,
This was helpful. Thanks for posting. So hard to keep up with Facebook so thanks for providing this resource.
To your happiness & harmony,
Susan
They like to keep us on our toes! Thanks for calling in and commenting 🙂
I’ll have to bookmark this so I can forward it to all my paranoid friends who are worried about other people seeing their stuff etc. Honestly Im a fan of “if you dont want people to know dont put it online”.
You and me both! Thanks for popping in and your comment 🙂
Hi, great information. Bookmarking so I can follow up later today. Will share with my friends also. Thanks.
I’m not worried-but I know that once it rolls out and people start using it, there will be quite a few people freaked out about it.
I’m hoping it will improve their search- fingers crossed.
Thanks for putting together a great article. Facebook changes are hard to stay on top of sometimes so this really helped educate me quickly. Now let’s see how fast before they change it again so I can forget!
🙂 Sylvia
Thanks for another fine update regarding Facebook. Something else I don’t have time to do… 🙂
Hi Jan,
Wow, there is much I have to learn about using Facebook & maximizing all that it offers.
Excellent post! I’ll have to catch the earlier posts, so I can start getting a grasp on this.
Thanks Jan! All the best to you in 2013!
George
This is an interesting development in the facebook world isn’t it! Will be interesting to see how many people *do* change their settings!
Thanks for the info,
cheers,
Gordon
Another reason I’m pleased my profile has been locked down for quite a while! I post more public posts nowadays (for business), but not much in comparison.
You make a good point there, Rosie. I know I don’t post anything public – perhaps I should on the rare occassion I post something business related!
I have my Facebook divided into Personal and Public. Business goes public and personal posts I don’t mind being public (chocolate eating for example).
Always have your business page as a link on your locked down personal profile though, as a lot of people may see you post on pages (public posts) and be interested in your business. If there is no link to a facebook page, or website, that’s a possible lead come to a dead end.
I actually popped over to my profile in another browser, not logged in. My website link is there and not much else apart from my wonderful header. One day I might actually get to sorting it to business public and personal!