Social networking giant Facebook will now expose people's embarrassing photos and status updates, as it forces users onto its new timeline feature.

According to The Herald Sun, Facebook will soon make it mandatory for users to activate the new Timeline function, which displays their entire history of a person on the site-from status updates to photos.

Timeline is a feature announced by the social network late 2011 that reorganises people's Facebook page to tell their "life story".

But for those who don't use a seven-day grace period to moderate what will appear on their old profile page, it could soon expose embarrassing photos they had forgotten about, News.com.au reports.

Australian Privacy Foundation vice-chair David Vaile equated Facebook to a "naughty teenager" for not encouraging people to think through the changes.

He warned people whose lives had moved on from embarrassing photos that they might face more serious consequences if they resurfaced.

"Up until now you had security by obscurity - now at Facebook's whim rather than yours, stuff will come back bubbling up from your past," Vaile said.

"And one of the problems with Facebook's model of encouraging people not to worry about security is it disrespects other people as well," he added. (ANI)