Patent ID: 8713055

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining a profile for a plurality of users of a social networking system, each profile identifying one or more items of user data associated with a user; monitoring actions taken by the users of the social networking system, one of the actions comprising a change in a privacy setting by the user that denies a particular user access to the one or more items of user data, the user and the particular user being indirectly connected within the social networking system; responsive to the change in the privacy setting, determining one or more information pathways of the social networking system that are affected by the change in the privacy setting, and propagating the change to at least one of the information pathways; and determining that a search of the social networking system has been conducted by the particular user via a search engine external to the social networking system to generate a search result, the search result including data associated with the user for display to the particular user via the at least one of the information pathways; and generating, by a computer processor, a modified search result by removing the data associated with the user from the search result responsive to the changed privacy setting.