Millions of Facebook users would no longer be retaining anonymity on one of the most popular social network. Mark zuckerberg-led biz has announced the retirement of an old privacy setting – ‘Who can look up your Timeline by name?’ that enabled users to hide their presence on network to strangers.
This implies anyone active on the social network can check out the profile of privacy-conscious users through the search bar provided.
Facebook Close to Remove an Old Search Setting
Facebook users still having this old setting active will see a notice on their homepage like the one above. They can click to learn more, or close it to get a reminder later. Facebook, on this page gives umpteen reasons in justification for the action taken.
Last year we announced the removal of an old setting called “Who can look up your Timeline by name?” along with new controls for managing content on Facebook.
The search setting was removed last year for people who weren’t using it. For the small percentage of people still using the setting, they will see reminders about it being removed in the coming weeks. 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, wrote Michael Richter, Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook.
Personally, I believe the motivation behind doing so is the fact that the social networking site is a hardcore ad-backed company whose revenue growth depends on its users sharing as much data as possible with one another hence, the need to eradicate user privacy over time. The removal of this search setting coincides with the timing of the global roll out of Graph Search, a search engine introduced by Facebook sometime earlier.
Source – Facebook Newsroom
