The privacy Facebook.com once held for its users is diminishing after recently teaming up with Google as users' profiles will soon appear under public search results on popular search engine sites.
According to Facebook.com, when a person's name is typed into a search engine, a Facebook public search listing will appear among the search results. This feature, which will begin in the next couple weeks, will provide the user's name, profile picture and the networks to which they belong.
Morgan Bohart (senior-psychology) said she feels the move is an invasion of her privacy.
Facebook has given its users the option to remove their names from the search listing by editing the privacy preferences under their account.
"This is less favorable by privacy advocates because they require you to opt-out, meaning they will make your profile public unless you make the change," said Brian Holland, professor of Internet law.
Opposed to other online networking sites, Facebook has marketed itself as a more privacy-centered Web site, Holland said.
Paul Fiset (freshman-engineering) said he understood students would prefer that Facebook not allow profiles to be searched.
"But I think that students should keep personal information off of it," he added.
Because Facebook has made its 34 million user profiles available on search engines, companies such as Rapleaf, an online people search engine, can easily gain access to personal information.
Rapleaf, which did not respond to calls seeking comment by press time, gathers publicly available information about people through social networks such as Facebook and creates user profiles.
"Once the information is passed to others, you cannot control who sees it," Holland said.
Holland said everything users say or do on Facebook and other social networks, even if they have modified privacy settings, is fair game to sell to marketers.
"When new users are creating profiles and hitting 'I accept,' they are allowing their private information to be sold to databases," Holland said.
As it floats around the Internet, all of this information can end up in the hands of stalkers, government officials, hackers and marketers.
Danielle Troutman (senior-art education) said people are responsible for what they put on the Internet.
"You're putting yourself out there and you should expect that somehow people will find out any information they want to about you," she said.
Holland said most sites similar to Facebook are vulnerable to information sharing, regardless of any ties to Google.
"These networking sites are constantly being hacked," he said. "The idea that once joining an online networking site your information will be kept private is false."
