Download PDFThere’s likely a large banner atop your New Feed in Facebook this morning. It is there to inform you that profiles on Facebook, previously walled off from the other Internet, are now publicly available.
Since your search privacy settings are set to “Everyone,” you now have a public search listing. This means that friends who aren’t yet on Facebook will be able to search for you by name from our Welcome page. Public Search Listings may only include names and profile pictures.
In a few weeks, these public search listings can be found by search engines like Google. No privacy rules are changing; anyone who discovers your public search listing must register and log in to contact you via Facebook.
Source: Facebook
Ultimately, this is a necessary move for Facebook if it plans to divert more and more users away from the other leading social networking platforms (ahem, LinkedIn). As the note indicates, this is a configurable setting, which continues in Facebook’s tradition of offering the option for invisibility.
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