Log in to your Facebook profile (of course you have one) and you may see a new alert letting you know that you could soon have a “public search listing”.

Facebook’s developers yesterday announced that they’d be opening up publicly-available member profile information to the likes of Google and other search engines, and allowing non-members to search for people from the front page of Facebook.

All users have a choice over whether their listings are accessible in this way, by altering their privacy settings. However, given recent member stupidity, that’s easier said than done. A lot of Facebook users, it has to be said, are more interested in adding bizarre applications and letting their personal information spread itself all over the place, rather than limiting their profiles.