Privacy probing - Facebook's Graph Search

During the Crunchie Awards in San Francisco, at the beginning of year 2010, our little favorite net dictator, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that "privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’ and had just evolved over time".

A Facebook project, initially tossed as garbage code, has resurfaced recently as "Graph Search", a so called "search engine" which is based on a "propagate search code". You don't understand a word I'm saying, right? Ok, let's suppose you have a Facebook account, your privacy is set ironclad and you feel comfy talking to your friends, sharing ideas, photos and stuff. Suddenly, you discover that somebody named I.C.U. (hehe, nice touch, right?) has access to your albums, your photos, everything. How the hell could that have happened? you might ask. Well, it's pretty simple...

I.C.U. has their own list of friends. Those friends have their own friends, so on, and so forth. In the aftermath of this spiral somebody, somewhere knows you, hence giving I.C.U. access - through a very intricate structure of intermediaries - access to your information. And that, my friends, is Graphic Search, the foremost tool to invade somebody's privacy.

Despite all the paranoid instructions that might float around your Facebook timeline ("hover over my name, click settings, uncheck Events..., blabla") there is a simpler way to disable, at least temporarily, Graph Search. Gather around, kids!

By default, when you create a Facebook account, the language is set to English (US). In your Facebook account, go to "Settings" (the gear thingie top right) > Account Settings (from the drop-down menu) and, at the right of the Language line, click Edit. From the drop-down list, next to the Primary Language, choose English (UK) instead of English (US). Click Save and hell, you're "Graph Search" free!

The explanation is that Graph Search was implemented for the English (US) dictionary only and it would take me aeons to explain Zuckerberg that there is almost no difference between the US and the UK dictionary, it's just the pronunciation and a few slang terms that make the difference. Still, I can't argue with a genius, hehe.

For other people, who are partial to their native language, don't be coy! Change the Primary Language accordingly and be assured that by the time Zuckerberg's linguistic team finds a way to implement your language into Graph Search, your grandchildren would have found a better way to override this crap.

Cheers! (English UK) hehe....