FaceBook turns search on

USA Today reports (page 3B) that FaceBook is planning to allow search engines to index the site. This means that what people thought was not searchable may become public, depending upon the rules FaceBook sets up for crawling by the search engines. At a minimum, FaceBook will allow indexing of names and photos unless users choose to opt out.

FaceBook users are already up in arms. The opt out option requires users to do something to keep their information off search engines, and privacy advocates generally prefer opt in strategy that don't require users to remember to select a specific setting.

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