Yesterday as I was testing Facebook’s Graph Search, which is in Beta, I searched for the following: women who live in Helsinki, Finland and who like sushi. (I wanted something that would get lots of results. It did.)
At the end of the day, I cleared my search history.
Then today, a sponsored story for a Helsinki-based sushi restaurant appeared in my News Feed.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence.
In any case, today, continuing my testing, I searched for people with my name who live in Finland. (The result: me and another guy.) Graph Search will definitely make it easier for your Facebook profile to be found by others.
Here’s a couple of things to check on just to make sure you don’t have anything exposed.
First of all, consider limiting all of your old posts. Most of the profiles that I’ve observed make good use of current privacy controls, but some have pre-2010 legacy posts which are public.
Secondly, edit your likes. (facebook.com/”profile.name”/favorites)
At least limit each category to friends rather than public, especially if your posts are generally only shared with friends.
It is important to note that liking a Facebook Page is always public, so “liking sushi” will still end up being searchable by Graph Search. But at least with adjusted settings, the rest of your likes will be in a “black box” that only your friends can see by browsing.
Also, maybe you should unlike some of the stuff you’ve accumulated over the years while you’re editing the privacy settings?
A hat tip to @rik_ferguson for reminding me of the Likes settings.
Regards,
Sean
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