Patent ID: 8800005

Claim:
A method comprising: accessing, by one or more computing devices, a graph structure comprising a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges connecting the nodes, each of the edges between two of the nodes representing a single degree of separation between them, the nodes comprising a first-user node corresponding to a first user associated with an online social network and one or more second-user nodes that each correspond to a second user associated with the online social network; receiving, by one or more of the computing devices, a search query from the first user; identifying, by one or more of the computing devices, one or more contents corresponding to the search query, each content relating to a second user; and generating, by one or more of the computing devices, search results comprising a reference to each identified content relating to a second user corresponding to a second-user node that is connected to the first-user node in the graph structure by a series of nodes and edges that does not comprise a node corresponding to a user on a gray list comprising user IDs of the users who are not authorized to access the identified content relating to the second user, wherein the gray list is based on a black list.