With the changes to Facebook's privacy policy in December 2009 — specifically the advent of "Publicly Available Information" (PAI), which includes your name, location and gender — one way to mitigate the risk of PAI misuse is to remove yourself from search entirely.
Privacy Settings: Search
| Option |
Sophos recommends |
Why? |
| Facebook Search Results |
Be careful |
Facebook's new "Publicly Available Information" (PAI) settings means anyone who finds you in a search can see this information. While certainly one of the points of social media is to network with people you have lost touch with, opening your profile to be seen and viewed by absolutely anyone puts your PAI at risk for exploitation. |
| Public Search Results |
Uncheck "allow" |
Sophos recommends that you disable this option. If it is enabled then it allows search engines to index your PAI in addition to letting people find you on Facebook using an external search engine. There is no benefit to this, as you will only be linking up with people who are on Facebook. And remember, once your profile has been indexed by a search engine, you lose control over that information and over how long it can be seen. |