Facebook privacy feature gone

Facebook announced late last year that if would remove the privacy feature that let users regulate whether other users could search for and locate their profiles with the Facebook search function. Facebook removed the feature – called “Who can look up my Timeline by name?” – for everyone that wasn’t already using it. Yesterday, Facebook said they will begin removing it for all other users as well, completely eliminating the functionality within the next couple of weeks.

The feature, on the privacy settings page, allows users three varying levels of privacy regarding the way that user-profiles are indexed by the site’s search engine. Users could choose who was allowed to search for their profiles by name: friends only, friends of friends, or everyone (the default option).

Michael Richter, Facebook chief privacy officer, wrote: “Whether you’ve been using the setting or not, the best way to control what people can find about you on Facebook is to choose who can see the individual things you share.”

“The setting also made Facebook’s search feature feel broken at times,” Richter said. “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.”