Facebook, a social networking site with an estimated 40 million active members, is currently undergoing a facelift. Some members may soon find their private information available on the World Wide Web.
On Sept. 5, Facebook announced that it will allow non-users to search profiles via search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.
The announcement marked a significant change in policy for Facebook. Previously, major search engines did not have access to Facebook members’ profiles.
However, members can set their privacy settings so that their information is not viewable by the general public by changing their search setting on the “search privacy” page.
“A user can also restrict what information shows in their public listing by going to the search privacy page,” according to Facebook.com.
“Only users who are over 18 and have the ‘Allow my public search listing to be indexed in external search engines’ checked in their search privacy settings will appear in external searches,” the site reads.
Facebook engineer Philip Fung explained the reasons for the change on his blog.
By expanding the search capability to non-members, individuals are able to more easily find friends who are already members of Facebook. Fung reassured individuals that they will be able to set privacy settings to their desired level.
Privacy concerns are a high priority for Facebook.
“The thing that’s most important to Facebook, overall, is people having control over the information they share and who they share it with,” said Meredith Chin, corporate communications spokesperson for Facebook.
“The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing,” Fung said.
Facebook also told users that “public search listings may only include names and profile pictures.”
Some students are not convinced; they are particularly concerned about their profile information being available to graduate schools and prospective employers.
“It is an invasion of privacy,” said Simone Jadczak ’10. “You don’t know who is viewing your profile.”
Carl Lombardi ’09 agreed.
“Anybody can see my profile and I do not want that to occur. I think the idea of friends seeing your profile is one thing, but I do not want just anybody to see it,” he said.
Lombardi also worries about security issues on campus.
“I use Facebook to find friends’ rooms when I forget the number,” he added. “With anyone seeing that it can pose a safety risk for the students on Facebook.”
Over the past month, Facebook has begun to notify its members of the policy change. But many Fairfield students seem unaware of the changes.
“I didn’t even know that they were able to do that,” said Theresa Griffin ’10.
“My profile is set to private and so are a lot of my friends,” she said.
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