If the Facebook post below: "Facebook has changed their privacy settings once more! Due to the new 'graphic app / graph app'", is posted on your Facebook Wall or Timeline, please delete it because it is a hoax. The post is misleading and if you follow the instructions in it, you may prevent your friends from seeing what you have posted or it may prevent you from seeing what your friends have posted.
Here is a copy of the hoax:
---Hello to all of you who are on my list of contacts of Facebook.
I would like to ask a favor of you…. You may not know that Facebook has changed its privacy configuration once again. Thanks to the new “Graphic app”, any person in Facebook anywhere in the world can see our photos, our “likes” and our “comments”. During the next two weeks, I am going to keep this message posted and I ask you to do the following and comment “DONE”.
Those of my friends who do not maintain my information in private will be eliminated from my list of friends, because I want the information I share with you, my friends, to remain among my friends and not be available to the whole world.
I want to be able to publish photos of my friends and family without strangers being able to see them which is what happens now when you choose “like” or “comment”.
Unfortunately we cannot change this configuration because Facebook has made it like this. So, please, place your cursor over my photo that appears in this box (without clicking) and a window will open. Now move the cursor to the word “Friends”, again without clicking and then on “Settings”.
Uncheck “Life Events” and “Comments and Like”. This way my activity with my family and friends will no longer be made public. Now, copy and paste this text on your own wall (do not “share” it!). Once I see it published on your page, I will un-check the same for you---
Facebook has not changed it privacy settings recently and the "Graphic app" that the post is referring to, doesn't exist.
I think what this hoax is referring to is the new Facebook search called "Graph Search". The new Facebook Graph Search does not allow anyone that you are not friends with, to search for your photos, comments and other things that you have posted on Facebook, unless you have made these things public. Making something “Public” means it will be accessible to everyone.
In other words, the Graph Search results are different for everyone, based on what you’ve shared with them. Your privacy choices determine what your friends see when they search.
Graph Search results are personalized for you, just like News Feed is unique to you.
For example:
If you search for "Photos of Tokyo", you'll see photos your friends took in Tokyo and shared with you, as well as Public photos related to Tokyo.
This means if two people search for: "Photos of my friends in Tokyo", they’re going to see different results.
Here is what happens when you share something on Facebook with the following privacy settings:
- Only Me = no one else can find it in search
- Friends = friends will see it in their search results
- Public = anyone who searches for it can find it
For information about how to manage or control what you share on Facebook, please click here.
For more information about Graph Search, please click here.
Please help stop the spread of this hoax by deleting it, marking it as spam, not commenting on it, not 'liking' it or not sharing it on Facebook or other social networking websites.