NEW YORK (CNNMoney) The company announced Thursday it is officially axing a privacy setting that allowed people to hide their profiles from other users in Facebook’s search field.
The setting “who can look up my timeline by name” had already disappeared from the options for some users — specifically, those who weren’t using the feature in December of last year. Thursday’s change affects a “small percentage of people” on the site who were still using the feature, Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) said, although it did specify how many of its 1.15 billion active users were impacted.
Facebook explained that the tool was outdated, because users could be found in other ways, either by clicking on their name in a mutual friend’s Timeline or News Feed. The social network also said people became confused when they were unable to find a friend via search.
