Facebook Graph Search and What It Means for Your Privacy Settings

The inter webs are all abuzz over Facebook’s new Graph Search feature. While the general consensus is that it’s right on the mark for finding restaurants and movies, for example, responses citing seeming privacy infringements are also common. One thing is certain: this is when you need to know your new Facebook privacy settings inside and out.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Are you sharing with your best friend, your close circle, or the entire world?

We've all become inured to the idea that pictures and updates will show up in all of our friends’ news feeds  That’s why they’re friends, right? Now, you need to start paying attention to the icons next to your posts.

A globe to the right means that it’s not just going to your friends: it’s going to be visible to the entire world. Scrolling through those options allows you to restrict content to friends of friends, just friends, or maybe even just yourself (for now).

2. Does everyone need to know what you’re up to?

Spring-cleaning time! The upper right-hand corner of your timeline shows your activity log, including pictures or posts in which you’re tagged. While you may have removed some from your timeline, they’re still available and linked to you using the new Graph Search.

Since you can’t change the settings of things that your friends have posted, now may be a good time to go through and untag anything even remotely questionable.

Do I want to take this friendship offline?

I am proud to live in Mumbai, and I don’t care who knows it! Well, except for that guy my mother tried to fix me up who just moved here from Delhi... Graph Search has a feature that searches by location. So, if you don’t want the world to find you based on school, hometown, etc. --or showing up at your door - the Location features tag your posts with the exact location from which they've been made-- then it’s time to update your privacy settings.

Do I want you to know what I Like?

Graph search will be tapping into your LIKES and check-ins. If your friend searches a place that you’ve been, and that’s tagged publicly, it will show up. So, if you were at Phoenix Mills when you were supposed to be at work, you should double-check your privacy settings before your boss finds out.

It’s very easy to change all of these settings. When you click on places you've been it brings up all related posts you were tagged in. Simply change what you don’t want out there. The “Like” tab works the same way, and untagging pictures is familiar to anyone else with a tendency towards double chins in photos.

Go forth and post, check-in, and share all of those baby and pet photos--keeping your audience in mind!