ALLAN THE MAN

Rappler readers and Facebook users sent out warning of a hoax making the rounds on social media.

The hoax, which is based on the fear of having people you don't want seeing your posts and photos because of a "graphic app," is a fabrication. While the hoax has been worded a number of different ways, the intent is the same: to misinform and cause you to waste time disabling your ability to see others' posts.

Ensuring your account's contents stay private yet readable by the people you trust is an easy process though.

The 'graphic app' hoax

The hoax explains that Facebook supposedly changed its privacy configuration again. Something called a "graphic app" would reportedly allow anyone to see your photos, likes, and comments.

Despite the hoax saying that the supposed configuration cannot be changed, the hoax continues to explain a workaround.

It tells people to hover over a friend's photo icon on your timeline, and then change the settings to disable public showing of people's live events, comments, and like votes on other posts.

This supposed workaround is time consuming and, worse still, simply disables your ability to see your friend's live events, comments, and likes.

The graph search and you

The hoax mentioned above likely refers to the graph search function on Facebook.

Unlike what the hoax states, the privacy page for graph search says graph search finds information that is unique to a person's account or is otherwise publicly available.

In other words, if you've locked down your account to make your profile unsearchable, graph search will not pick up your data and show it to someone who isn't connected to you and whom you've not given permission to view a given post or photo.

If you've received this particular sort of message, you may also want to compare it to Rappler's hoax roundup for 2012 or to a Snopes article on the graph search hoax. Some of the wording from this new hoax may be similar in tone to previous hoaxes or may be a copy of the hoax as reported on Snopes.

Keeping things private

Your best bet to keep your posts private and at the same time enable your friends to see them is a lot simpler.

Go into your privacy settings by clicking the gear on your facebook profile. In the privacy settings, you can set your general preferences to ensure only your friends read your posts moving forward. You can also ensure that posts you've made in the past get limited access using the Limit Past Posts function. 

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