Reminder: Finishing the Removal of an Old Search Setting
October 10, 2013
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.
What setting are you removing and why?
Everyone used to have a setting called "Who can look up your Timeline by name?," which controlled whether you could be
found when people typed your name into the Facebook search bar.
The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited. For example, it didn’t
prevent people from navigating to your Timeline by clicking your name in a story in News Feed, or from a mutual friend’s
Timeline. Today, people can also search Facebook using Graph Search (for example, "People who live in Seattle,") making
it even more important to control the privacy of the things you share rather than how people get to your Timeline.
The setting also made Facebook's search feature feel broken at times. For example, people told us that they found it
confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn't find them in search results, or when
two people were in a Facebook Group and then couldn't find each other through search.