Privacy settings can restrict Facebook Graph Searches

Facebook recently generated a lot of buzz when it unveiled its new search function "Graph Search." The new feature, which has been enabled for only a small list of beta customers so far, allows Facebook users to enter queries to find information about friends, friends of friends, or people who have public Facebook profiles.

For instance, if you want to see who among your friends likes "Hawaii Five-0," you can type in, "My friends who like Hawaii Five-0," and a list of your friends who have "liked" the show’s official Facebook page will appear. You could also pull up a list of your friends who live in Waikiki or attended Kaiser High School.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being able to search through information Facebook friends have chosen to share with you. It’s also important to note that the graph search feature only returns results permitted by your friends’ privacy settings. However, many are concerned that users who you may not have friended can also access your "Likes" and other information.

For example, if someone on Facebook has not properly set up his or her privacy settings and, as a result, has a public Facebook profile, then that person’s "likes" and other personal information, such as religious preferences, sexual orientation, where they live, etc., could now be easily searched by anyone on Facebook.

So, what’s the big deal if the information is already publicly available? It becomes an issue of "discoverability." Most people don’t care that dozens of people see them walking down a public street, but how would those same people feel if they knew that a random person could look up a list of every road they’ve ever walked down? Certainly that’s an extreme example, but it illustrates the point that information, when made easily discoverable, can create some privacy concerns. (This is why Google Street View disguises the identity of people photographed on public streets, by the way.)

It’s possible to achieve balance between privacy and openness when information is available but not easily discoverable, which is how Facebook operated until recently. You may not care that people who are searching for you specifically can find your Facebook page and see what you like. But it’s another story when someone can run a simple query and pull up hundreds of strangers in their area and use that information to target them for fraud or worse.

Someone created a Tumblr page of potentially dangerous graph searches at actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com, and the results are sobering. He shows redacted search results for queries involving "single women who live nearby and like getting drunk" and searches for homosexual men who live in countries where homosexuality is a capital crime.

How do you protect yourself from showing up in a graph search? Unfortunately, there’s no way to opt out of the feature completely, but if you select the appropriate privacy settings, it will restrict random strangers from finding you via a search.

First, check who can view the information you post on Facebook. Within Facebook, click on the lock icon at the top of the page, and select "Who can see my stuff?" and then select "View As" under "What do other people see in my timeline?" This will allow you to view your page as a stranger would. If you see things that you don’t want to share with the universe, adjust your privacy settings accordingly.

Adjusting your privacy settings can be complex, but the basic settings will generally prevent you from appearing on graph searches made by people you have not specifically friended. Click on the "Settings" button in the upper right and select "Privacy Settings." From there you can restrict who can see your stuff to just friends and stop search engines from linking to your timeline.

You’ll also want to go through your photo albums and make sure they are set to "Friends," unless you want them to appear in the graph searches. Go to the Photos page and click on the gear icon next to each album, which will allow you to determine who is able to view them. Some albums can only be set to "Public," but you can go into them and set permissions on individual pictures if you want.

Finally, enable privacy on your "likes." Bring up your profile page and click on the "likes" section, then click the Edit button in the upper right. From there you can set the audience for each category of "likes" (TV shows, music, etc.) to "Friends," "Public" or something else. And while you’re in there, take a look at your "likes" and see if there are any you’d like to remove.

Facebook rules change several times per year, so it’s important to keep on top of your privacy settings. We’ll continue to keep you updated when new features are released or other privacy issues rear their ugly heads.

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Hawaiian Telcom Information Security Director Beau Monday is a local cybersecurity expert. Reach him at Beau.Monday@hawaiiantel.com.