As of 30th September 2013, Facebook Graph Search has officially opened its big, omniscient arms to every last check-in, status update, note, and comment you've ever posted throughout your entire Facebook career. Which, yes, sounds pretty terrifying, but don't worry—we're here to help you cover your tracks.

Thankfully, Facebook has given us the tools we need to (mostly) take control of our privacy moving forward. Here's what you need to know.

Protecting Your Past

The main concern with Facebook's new, more granular search is that your hundreds—and in some cases thousands—of past posts, each now requires its own, unique privacy setting. But don't worry, you're not going to have to spend days clicking through every embarrassing, insipid post from the previous 7-odd years. Instead, Facebook lets you change your entire past en masse—sort of.

To keep strangers from poring through every single detail of your Facebook history, you'll want to turn any post that's either Public or visible to Friends of Friends into a strictly Friends Only post. To effect that change in one swoop, click on the Privacy Shortcuts icon in the top right to bring down the following menu.

The dropdown will show you a few (hopefully) familiar privacy options. Click See More Settings, which will take you to a more robust menu. Once there, you'll see a new option: Limit Past Posts. Click that.

Facebook will then warn you that, even though you may change your posts to friends-only, they'll still be visible to friends of anyone tagged. You'll also be told that, hey, there's still time to turn back and "just" go change the privacy setting on every single individual post. Ignore! NO one has time for that noise. Instead, click on Limit Old Posts.

 

But wait, Facebook says. This deed can't be undone, and the consequences of changing your mind could be terrible! Do you realize what you're doing?

Yes, you do. And it's worth noting that Facebook tries to dissuade you by giving you the exact same alternative as above—just reworded to sound more tedious (i.e. an honest description).

Ignore again! Go ahead and Confirm, and you're done.

Now, bear in mind that this only protects you against non-friends. Your Facebook friends will still be able to dig up anything that hasn't been explicitly guarded, but preventing that would kind of defeat the whole point of Facebook anyway. And if there is anything you recall as being particularly incriminating, now's probably a good time to go back and lock that sucker down, especially since you've still got some time before the new search feature becomes universal.


 

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