Facebook Graph Search: How Much Information Are You Sharing?

Facebook teamed up with Bing to develop a new search feature called Graph Search. Graph Search will allow you to search Facebook to answer more sophisticated questions. It will work a lot like a normal search engine, but it focuses on Facebook.

With Graph Search you can ask Facebook "which of my friends watch Big Bang Theory?" and it will find all of your friends who do. You can also ask it to find "who went to certain schools", "people who play tennis that live nearby" or "photos of you and your friends".

The data available to Graph Search has always been there, you put it on Facebook for all to see, right? Facebook is just indexing the information for our friends, and friends of friends. New data is not being added and the general public will not have access to your private information.

But you do need to make sure that the information you have on Facebook is something you don't mind everyone seeing. Everything you have posted since you first logged on to Facebook is fair game.

There are three steps you can take now to make sure the information you are sharing is something you won't regret later.

Related Link:  News 9 Team Facebook And Twitter

STEP 1: Limit Who Can See Your Future Posts

1. Click the ‘Lock' Icon on the top right of your profile

2. Click ‘See More Settings'

3. On the Privacy Tab click ‘Limit Past Posts' in the ‘Who Can See My Stuff' box

4. Click ‘Limit Past Posts'

STEP 2: Limit Who Can Search For You In Facebook

1. Stay on the same page

2. On the Privacy Tab click ‘Edit' by ‘Who Can Look Me Up'

3. Choose ‘Friends' in the pull down menu and click ‘Close'

4. When the box pops up click ‘Confirm'

5. Another box will pop up, click ‘Close'

Related Link:  Facebook Graph Search

STEP 3: Check You Activity Log

Your Activity Log is Facebook's way of tracking all of your activity. It will contain any posts that you have made, any posts or photos you were tagged in and pages or posts you may have liked. That being said, this is where the fun begins, I'm being sarcastic if you can't tell. You will need to go through your activity log and make sure that there is nothing that you don't want to be seen by everyone on Facebook. To do that, follow the steps below.

STEP 2: Clean Up Your Activity Log

1. Stay on the same page

2. On the Privacy Tab click Use Activity Log by Who Can See My Stuff

3. From there you can delete, unlike, hide or remove posts.

As Graph Search launches and becomes a working part of Facebook, it is always a smart practice to be aware of what you are posting and who could see it.