Facebook privacy drive will remove feature allowing profile finding by name
Facebook has announced that it is to “sunset” its privacy-checking feature: “Who can look up your timeline by name?”.
The search metrics are changing
Thursday’s announcement will, it is claimed, prompt users to take better control of their individual privacy settings. However, critics have already claimed that it will render everyone fully searchable, rather than the reverse.
“Everyone used to have a setting called “Who can look up your Timeline by name?,” which controlled whether you could be found when people typed your name into the Facebook search bar,” Facebook said, explaining the change.
“The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited. For example, it didn’t prevent people from navigating to your Timeline by clicking your name in a story in News Feed, or from a mutual friend’s Timeline.
“Today, people can also search Facebook using Graph Search (for example, “People who live in Seattle,”) making it even more important to control the privacy of the things you share rather than how people get to your Timeline.
“The setting also made Facebook’s search feature feel broken at times. For example, people told us that they found it confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn’t find them in search results, or when two people were in a Facebook Group and then couldn’t find each other through search.”
Zac Miners of the IDG news service said: “In a matter of weeks, everyone on Facebook will be searchable by name. But you’ll still have ways to control who sees your content, as long as you can navigate Facebook’s web of privacy controls.”
He added: “Facebook is pulling the plug on a setting that allowed people to prevent others from finding them by name using the Facebook search bar.
“The setting was actually removed last year for people who weren’t using it, but it was left in place for those who were.
“Its disappearance means Facebook users will no longer have a way to prevent people from finding their Timeline on the site.”
A Facebook spokesperson said that less than 10 percent of its users were still using the setting.