I've been learning a lot about facebook this weekend. Surfing around, reading articles, etc. I've been enjoying my facebook SO much over the past few months, re-connecting with people just to say hi, find out how the past 20 years has gone for them, etc.
It's been a weird coincidence that in just the past couple weeks, I've found myself in at least three separate conversations with people whose intelligence and opinions I respect a lot, regarding facebook. It seems that there are many more identity theft concerns about it than I ever would have thought of. I'm NOT giving up facebook, but I'm sure being a lot more careful.
A few eye-openers for me--There are apparently folks out there whose "occupation" has become looking around facebook for potential "targets." Accepting as a "friend" anybody you do not know is a definite risk. Furthermore, the privacy settings are extremely important. A criminal can do wonders with your full birth date (which you could consider slightly altering), full name, and contact info--which some people make visible to everyone.
The new facebook format seems to have wiped out a lot of previous privacy settings. I went into each little particle of my account today, and I found that some sections that I thought were visible to "friends only" were actually visible to "friends of friends" or "everyone." I have some "friends" who have hundreds of "friends." I don't want to trust all THEIR choices of friends in seeing all my stuff!
The applications/games can have links with viruses. One of my most intelligent friends got one of those this weekend on a "zoo" application. Her message to me was to just go to websites directly and ignore links. She's not giving up the games, but she's a more careful player. I never cared about the games or had time for them, so I'm just going to stay away from most of those "applications."
A lot to pay attention to, apparently. My goal is to make visible "just enough" information for people to recognize me so that I can re-connect with people I want to find and/or want to find me. Everything else is going to be a "friends only" thing, and I'm going to choose my friends very carefully.