In Germany, StudiVZ (a German facebook clone) was quite notorious for being privacy-challenged, to the point where people started calling it StasiVZ (after the

In Germany, StudiVZ (a German facebook clone) was quite notorious for being privacy-challenged, to the point where people started calling it StasiVZ (after the former secret police of the GDR). What happened was that people removed all identifying information from their profiles and changed their names to something that was not recognizable for anyone to search (i.e., either you had them already in the contact list, or you couldn't find their profile without asking them). AFAIK, Facebook wants you to have your real name on your profile (as per TOS), but a friend with a stalker problem didn't have any problem to get it set to something non-namelike. IMO, a combination of a non-searchable name and restricted privacy settings for things like "who can tag you in pictures" and "who can see my posts" should solve the bulk of the issue. Extra points for blocking third-party inclusion of facebook.com scripts or images in your ad blocker (which also blocks the "sign in via facebook" javascript code, like-buttons etc. - these are probably the biggest privacy issues outside facebook itself).