This paper surveys the state of the art of privacy preserving for publishing social network data. First, the research background of privacy preserving for social network data is presented. Then, four important aspects of privacy preserving for social network data are summarized and analyzed in detail. The discussed topics includes privacy of social network, adversaries' background knowledge, privacy preserving technologies of social network, and data utility and experimental analysis. In addition, this paper points out the defects of privacy preserving in social networks and provides the comparisons of privacy preserving technologies. Finally, some potential future research directions are introduced. This paper aims to offer a deep insight into the mainstream methods and recent progress in this field, making detailed comparison and analysis.