Facebook blocks a privacy setting

Popular social network, Facebook is trashing a privacy feature that enables users regulate who can find them on the social network.

Facebook Inc. has said that it is removing a setting that controls users’ visibility when their names are typed

in the website’s search bar.

The management of Facebook says only a single-digit percentage of the nearly 1.2 billion people on its network were using the setting.

The change comes on the heels of building out its search feature, which people often use to find people they know — or want to know — on the site.

Facebook which is based in Menlo Park, California, however says users can protect their privacy by limiting the audience for each thing they post about themselves.

As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, of which 8.7% are fake. According to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service. Facebook (as of 2012) has about 180petabytes of data a year and grows by over half a petabyte every 24 hours.