Fine Tune Facebook Privacy

Probably very few of our young people think about updating their Facebook privacy settings when it comes to what they post on Facebook.

Privacy for many does not seem to be at the top of the list when using social media.  Well here’s the thing it needs to be…

There has been a lot of noise about the recent announcement from Facebook on its new feature – Facebook Graph Search,  so here’s what it means for you.

Your information can now show up in Facebook New Graph Search Results – Yes that’s right your info …. So if you’re into collecting stamps or pictures of pink puppy’s in the Pink Puppy Group, and don’t want this Intel showing up you might wanna listen up.

Ok breathe… panic and chaos does not need to set in just yet.  Facebook of course gives users a lot of control over their privacy.  The downside to this is it potentially could take you a lot of time revisiting content which you have posted/created and changing the privacy settings on it.    There is also one more piece of bad news.  Ok, are you ready – deep breath..

You can’t remove yourself from appearing in Graph Search altogether

Ok there I said it, there is no ‘Opt-Out’.  But what you can do is limit the times your information is appearing in the results.  The simples way you can do this is to take a look at things you’ve liked, then be a clever clogs and edit the visibility of your ‘likes’.

‘Simple!’ I hear you say with a huge sigh of relief.  Setting the visibility to “only me” will prevent this information being included in the Graph search result.  Now let’s look at the example just to make sure we’re super dooper clear:

Stamps  = Liked

Pink Puppies = Liked

Now for the purpose of this example, and I’m not admitting I like Pink Puppies, well maybe Poodles (just kidding).   So I’ve just removed “Pink Puppies” from my visibility now and when I search for “people who like Stamps & Pink Puppies” I am no longer returned in the result. Wallah!

Don’t forget – your settings also allows you to make some other information private, should you so wish. For example, relationship status or hometown.  To cut to the chase you can take steps to make yourself less visible in Graph Search results but not completely invisible.

Please don’t send me any invites to join your Stamp Collecting Group