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Facebook profiles to be open to public

Popular social networking site Facebook has added a public-facing search function in a move likely to anger privacy advocates. The function will initially allow anyone who is not registered with the site to search for a specific person. More controversially, in a month’s time, the feature will also allow people to track down Facebook members via search engines such as Google.

The social networking site is thought to have about 39 million members. According to a poll run in the bdaily last month, over 60% of bdaily readers are regular users of Facebook.

The firm said that the information being revealed is minimal. The public search listing will show the thumbnail picture of a Facebook member from their profile page, as well as links allowing people to interact with them. But, in order to add someone as a friend or send them a message, the person will have to be registered with Facebook.

Users who want to restrict what information is available to the public or opt out of the feature altogether can change their privacy settings. They have a month to do so.

There are concerns that personal content will become aggregated for marketing or other purposes. Security experts have pointed out the dangers of publicising your date of birth – one of the options in a Facebook profile – because of the way it has been traditionally used as a way of identifying bank customers.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .