If you’ve been on the fence about closing down your Facebook account over privacy concerns, now might be the time to take the plunge. That’s because the social network is removing an option that allowed members to prevent themselves from showing up in search results – a move they promised was coming nearly a year ago.
Last December, an option known as “Who can look up your Timeline by name?” was removed for people that weren’t already using it. Those that opted to use the privacy feature were allowed to continue to do so – until now. As the name suggests, it allowed people to control if they could be found via search and by whom.
Facebook noted in a blog post on the subject that the small percentage of people still using the setting will see reminders about it being removed in the coming weeks. Regardless of if you are using the setting or not, Facebook says the best way to control what people can find out about you is to choose who can see the individual things you share.
As a further reminder, those that share content publically will also see a notice in the coming weeks that those posts can be seen by anyone, even people they may not know.
It’s worth pointing out that the setting in question never prevented people from finding your post via alternate routes like clicking your name in a status update, a photo you’ve been tagged in or a Like on a mutual friend’s post.
