Facebook Just Launched a New Feature: Here's How to Protect Your Profile From Unwanted Searches
Facebook's (FB) Graph Search feature rolled out to everyone this week.
The new search tool lets you to search Facebook's huge amount of data to get consolidated results. Mark Zuckerberg stressed Graph Search's privacy awareness at the big reveal months ago.
"Every piece of content has its own audience, most content is not public, and you can only search for content that has been shared with you," Zuckerberg said at the time.
Despite this reassurance, you still should take some time to look at your Facebook privacy settings to make sure things you share don't inadvertently show up in search.
The first thing you should tweak is who can see the information about you that's in your profile. Start by heading to your timeline and click into your "About" section.
Next, you'll see an edit button next to each different section. Click that edit button and then choose the type of audience you want to view this information.
Once you're done adjusting your about section, scroll down the page and you can view the different types of things that you like. If you click the pencil next to any section and select "Edit Privacy" you can change the audience.
This will control what shows up when someone you've connected with performs a graph search.
The next privacy setting you'll want to tweak is your Activity Log. This controls what shows up on your Timeline. From the privacy and settings page select activity log. Make sure "Use Activity Log" is selected.
Once inside the Activity Log, find a post and click the two-headed icon.
This part may be tedious but go through any post, like, tag, comment, photo, etc. that you want to limit visibility.
Also inside of the Activity Log is a way to remove yourself from tagged posts and photos. Under a post someone has tagged you in, click on the two-headed icon. Next, click Report/Remove Tag.
This is what shows up when you want to remove a post about you from Facebook. Select the appropriate option.
And this is the box that shows up when you want to remove a photo or request a tag to be removed.
The last step is to limit visibility of your past posts. This one's easy. Head to the Privacy Settings and Tools page again. Under the "Who can see my stuff option," a drop-down of "Who can see my future posts" will show up. Click the next drop-down and change it to "Friends."
Deeper inside the Settings menu is an option to limit your past posts. Click the button and it will change the audience for all your old posts.
Above all it's always important to audit your Facebook page and see what other users see when they look at your page.
To do this:
1. Head to the lock icon in the top left corner of your page.
2. Click View As and type in the person who you would like to view your page as.
