Patent ID: 8752186

Claim:
A computer implemented method comprising: maintaining a user account for each of a plurality of users of a social networking system, each user account comprising social network information associated with a respective user of the plurality of users; establishing a plurality of connections, each connection between two or more of the user accounts; maintaining, by the social networking system, one or more privacy settings for a subject user of the plurality of users, the maintained privacy settings selected by the subject user and containing rules for access to social network information associated with the subject user, each rule making one or more items of the social network information associated with the subject user either available or unavailable to one or more other users of the plurality of users based on the established connections between the subject user and the one or more other users; receiving a request from an external system for information associated with the subject user of the social networking system, the external system outside of the social networking system, the external system configured to provide an online service to the subject user, and the external system further configured to personalize the online service with information associated with the subject user obtained from the social networking system; transmitting a response to the external system, the response comprising information responsive to the request for information associated with the subject user based on the maintained privacy settings; updating the maintained privacy settings to change one or more of the rules for access to the social network information associated with the subject user; and responsive to updating the maintained privacy settings, communicating one or more of the updated privacy settings to the external system instructing the external system to enforce the updated privacy settings.