The other day my wife was talking to one of my teens about the “dangers” of facebook. Essentially telling her to be careful about putting pictures or personal info up where others can see them.
As I understand it, my kid has a pretty basic facebook site which is only open by invite. She says some of her college friends check their facebook more frequently than their e-mail, so it is the best way to stay in touch.
I’m pretty ignorant about computers, the net, and such. Not really understanding what goes on in my computer and over the net, it is easy to get scared by folks trying to hack into your system, send viruses, and stories of on-line predators and creeps. I was wondering if anyone out there would provide your opinions/experiences as to what is safe and what is risky about facebook/myspace and the like.
Another aspect is that it seems the younger generations has quite different opinions/concerns about “privacy” than older generations. I’m often surprised at how readily people post for public viewing personally identifiable and potentially embarrassing info. Maybe I’m too uptight - but maybe they are not being circumspect enough. And I wonder what kind of on-line “youthful indiscretions” might come back to haunt folks later when they are looking for jobs, etc.
I think I tend to figure dipping your toes in is probably okay, whereas my wife is more of the “stay high and dry unless you are willing to risk getting soaked” opinion. I suppose the middle ground may well lie somewhere in between.
The main thing kids need to know is that MySpace and Facebook are not some kind of protected zone where different rules apply. Some don’t seem to get that social networking sites are just as open and public as any other website or chat room (“chat room”-- is that an antiquated phrase? Am I revealing myself as a fogey? ). I know kids who are very careful not to divulge personal information over IM, because they know the person on the other end might be a scammer or predator of some kind, but have no qualms about posting the same info on MySpace because “only my friends look at it.”
I have no concerns what so ever with facebook or myspace. I am, however, a 24 year old male. If I had a teenage daughter, my views would be slightly different. I would ensure her profile was private, which means she must accept you as a friend to view her profile. Facebook is set up so you must be in the same school to view people who aren’t your friends (although this has recently changed now that they have incorporated geograpic areas as networks).
Concerning your last paragraph, I assume you mean the middle ground is somewhere between high and dry and getting soaked? I’d agree. Just like any other activity on the web, you must be careful what information you make public, and what information simply does not go up on your site.
As for embarassing pictures, if I took those down, I don’t think there’d be any pics of me left online!
I have had my phone number on my Facebook page for about two years, and have only recieved one call from somebody who got my number from my page. My address has been there also, and I haven’t had any unexpected visitors. In general, Myspace pages are more open to people you don’t know, and the information on my respective pages reflect that.
So I just went to facebook, and they asked if I wanted to check out if I had friends in the community. Figured I’d see if I could turn up my kid. Then they asked for my e-mail address AND password.
Like I said, I’m pretty ignorant about the internet. But I’ve gotten enough fake paypal and other messages, that I’m very hesitant to type in my passwords anywhere other than on the sites they apply to.
When I graduated colllege in May '06 and started looking for a job, I set up a token public MySpace page that would not raise any red flags to potential employers in case they searched my name. I also emphasized my work ethic in the personal description. I have a good job now, so my strategy either helped a little bit or made no difference.
Other than that, I don’t really use MYSpace since it times out or fucks up half the time. I’ve never understood what makes it so popular.
Facebook helped me stay in touch or re-connect with old friends, which was helpful to me as I went to college out-of-state. My profile is only available to friends. Also, I avoid posting sensitive information such as address and date of birth and I use my nickname as my handle rather than real name. I don’t feel as if I’m in danger in keeping a profile.
This is not true for users who take full advantage of the privacy settings on both MySpace and Facebook.
All users login to Facebook with an email address and a Facebook password, not their email password.
Perhaps, but how many users fully understand those settings and how to implement them? And how trivial is it to defeat them by simply lying about one’s age or location? Or to log on using someone else’s account information?
Many people have been screwed because information on MySpace that they assumed would remain private found its way into the hands of potential employers, law enforcement, parents, spouses, identity thieves, sexual predators, bitchy ex-girlfriends, whatever. My point is simply: Never assume that you know, or can control, who’s reading what you post. It goes for SDMB, it goes for MySpace, it goes for everything else on the Internet.
Facebook does not ask you for your email password. When you sign up (when I did you had to have a college email) it specifically told you to use a different password than your email password, too. It’s asking for the password you created when you signed up for Facebook.
I have my profile reasonably blocked. My year isn’t on my birthday, no phone number, no address. You can pick who can see what on your profile, letting everyone see everything or friends only to everything. It’s customizible. Only friends can see most of my stuff, I think people from my school can see my profile but I don’t remember. I joined a regional network too (St. Louis) and I think I blocked those people from seeing my profile without being my friend. You could enter in your phone number and address, then change it so only your friends will see it, etc.
I don’t have anything really personal on my MySpace. I don’t like MySpace that much but I have a lot of friends on there I like to keep in touch with. Just some likes and dislikes, a few pics.
I think it is kinda funny though when people I know have graduated and totally delete everything from their Facebook profiles. Leave up only their profile pic and untag all the others, delete the dirty comments and quotes, etc. We had one of our student government people get in trouble over her Facebook profile too…she was only 20 and had pics of her playing Edward 40 hands.*
where you tape two 40oz beers to your hands and you can’t take them off until you are done drinking them
As a 34 year old professional man, I generally consider myself a bit too sophisticated to really get involved in MySpace or similar sites. Although I do use LinkedIn and Plaxo to keep track of my professional and personal contacts.
Maybe a part of me still thinks finding friends online is still mostly a pastime for losers and pedophiles.
I haven’t signed up for facebook. Instead, one of the 3 main options on the main page asks if you’d like to see “Who’s on facebook?/find friends before you join”. When I click on that option, they ask for my “e-mail password”.
I’ve checked out and registered for a number of different sites, and don’t recall any of them asking me for my e-mail password for any reasons. To someone who is ignorant - and a bit wary of - much of how the web works, this sent up a warning signal. And if they want something other than my “e-mail password” they should call it something else.
Autumn Almanac, I realize there are dangers inherent to posting about illegal or irresponsible activities in a semi-private ‘friends’-only online profile, but I still politely disagree with your statement that any profile on MySpace or Facebook is “just as open and public as any other website or chat room.” It is true, however, that too many people don’t realize the potential vulnerability of their online profiles until it’s too late.
Dinsdale, I don’t really know what to say in response since I have never encountered a request for ‘email password’ on Facebook. I went to the main site just now (http://www.facebook.com/) and to the left I see a blank field labeled ‘email’ and another blank field labeled ‘password’ and a clickable icon labeled ‘login.’
Please re-read my last post, and then take another look at the facebook main page.
I’m not talking about the blank fields in the left column, but instead about the 3 clickable links further to the right. Since I clearly stated that I had not logged in, the login area you are talking about would not apply to me until I had registered - by clicking on of the 3 links I tried to clearly refer to.
I really do not know how much clearer I can be about what I encounter every time I’ve gone to the facebook site. The fact that they ask for my e-mail password to see “Who’s on facebook?” makes my less than eager to register.
That’s probably so it can log on to your email and check the email addresses in your address book, then do a search to find if any of these match people on Facebook. It’s not necessary to register, only if you want to save yourself the trouble of doing an individual search for all your friends.
You can set Facebook settings so only people you know can see your profile and information. The only real risk I’ve run into on Facebook is the problem of compromising photos being seen by people you’d rather not show them to, but if you’re careful about (not) tagging them and adjust your settings so only your friends can see them, you should be okay.
I’ve never tried MySpace, and I don’t plan to. I like Facebook because it revolves around school networks.
I have both and prefer MySpace. Facebook irritates me with how it is set up and how you can’t view profiles of people without friending them. Sometimes I need to look at more than one tiny picture to determine if that is in fact the person I am looking for.
There are some jokingly scandalous pictures on my MySpace (anyone who knows me would know they aren’t real- those that don’t know me? They aren’t allowed on my profile). MySpace has some decent privacy settings- you can close off your whole profile, just your pictures, etc. My only advice would be the most logical: don’t put anything up that you don’t want the whole world seeing.
Anywho, if your daughter is in college, I wouldn’t be concerned. I mean, I would hope a college-aged individual would understand why it’s bad to put particular information up (unlike others here, I will not put my phone number or address on my Facebook, regardless of how secure it seems). Of course, your daughter may be younger, in which case this is definitely a good time to learn!
But I wouldn’t worry about FaceBook, it’s certainly far more secure than MySpace.
And Dinsdale: they are asking for your password because you went into the contact importer. It logs itself into your email and hijacks your address book, searching to see if any of them are on Facebook. I’ve done it without any problems, but you certainly don’t have to. There are plenty of other ways to search for folks on the site once you have an account.
I definitely prefer facebook, and, to me, it seems pretty secure.
There is no way that I know of on facebook to make your profile open to the world. If anyone wants to see your profile, you have to let them. There’s also an option to let them see a “limited” profile if you don’t know (or like) them well enough to show the whole thing. (I’m not 100% sure what the limited profile includes. I’ll have to go look.)
Also, on myspace, you get TONS of people using friend-adders or bands or horny boys looking at random girl pictures adding you. There’s a MUCH smaller amount of that on facebook.
So still talk about the dangers, but don’t worry too much about facebook. the creepies can’t access your info there unless you let them.
Not allowing a kid to be on facebook at all would actually limit them socially at my school, at least. It’s how casual things are organized–there’s a pick-up frisbee league, and that’s where they post it. It’s where parties are announced. It’s the first stage in establishing a friendship: facebook friends, then texting friends, then IMing friends, then hanging out friends.
You certainly don’t have to give your email passworkd, and in fact I’ve never done the troll for friends thing for exactly that reason. Overall, facebook is much more private than the other sites of the same sort–the default is always private.
Facebook does ask you for your email password, in the course of signing up, as a way for the site to go to your email address book and “auto-add” your email contacts to your Facebook “friends” list.
When I signed up, I was surprised by this, but did not give my email password as I felt a little wierd about it. I was still able to sign up successfully.
The main login page is asking for email address in full and facebook password, but Dinsdale is referring to something else. This may have been clarified upthread, but I add it here just in case.
I think Facebook is pretty secure - I use it to stay in touch with lots of people, and as others have mentioned, it can be pretty necessary to maintaining your social life, in some cases. I think the OP’s daughter is safe using it, but that everyone should have some notion of what it takes to keep safe on the internet, and to be aware that others may see whatever they post up there.
Look at this page: Redirecting... It clearly asks for your e-mail password.
I don’t get the whole myspace/facebook thing. I have a myspace account, not that I’ve done anything towards creating a page, only because it’s the only way to get in touch with a couple of bands I like. I’d rather just e-mail them, but what can you do?
A friend of mine told me he was kind of worried about his 16-year-old “wild child” son and was curious, as a concerned parent, about his facebook page. I said, “I’ve got a facebook account. We can look at your son’s page.”
Well, I couldn’t, because his son was smart enough to have his page set to private. So I sent him a request to be his friend. Which he accepted. (I felt very torn about this whole thing and got into a huge discussion at work about your kids’ right to privacy.)
As it turned out, there was nothing disturbing on my friend’s son’s page – but I told him that the thing that disturbed ME was that his son accepted my request. He didn’t know me from Adam. I have a university e-mail address, and if looked at my page (which has no photos or anything on it), he’d have at least assumed from my name that I’m female.
So here’s this 16-year-old kid thinking, “Whoa! Some hot college babe wants to be my friend!”
While it is an irrefutable fact that A) I work for a college and B ) I’m totally hot , I am old enough to be this kid’s mother. What if I had an adrogynous name and was some Mark Foley perv surfing for good-looking teen boys?
We had an incident on campus last year where a student created an incredibly racist and offensive group on facebook. It was taken down almost immediately, but not before it was noticed and became the subject of some angry postings on facebook. Students who were listed as being members of the group received threatening phone calls, etc.
When we talked to the students involved (most of whom were scared witless by all this), several said they’d given no thought to clicking “yes” when asked to join this group. It was an invitation from a guy they knew.
My point is that some of the facebook/myspace issues are not related to security and identity in the general sense.
Thanks everyone.
Talked about this a bit over dinner last night. My main point was to be careful, and not put anything on there that you don’t have a good reason to want on there. My daughter says the main (sole?) reason she uses it is because it is the best way to get in touch with some fellow students. Which, if that is the reason she is using it, she should think whether there is a reason to have her picture on it.
One thing that struck me as a little odd was she said her roommate has a pic of their dorm room on theirs. I know I may be being over-paranoid, but a teenage girl’s room seems a little private/personal to be casually sharing with strangers. Probably not a high risk, but just something that I don’t know that I’d do/encourage. Again, my test would be "Is there a good reason for posting this? Do I get a clear benefit at little risk?"
Another test my wife suggested was not to post anything you wouldn’t want your parents, prospective employers, or your possible kids in the future to see.
). I know kids who are very careful not to divulge personal information over IM, because they know the person on the other end might be a scammer or predator of some kind, but have no qualms about posting the same info on MySpace because “only my friends look at it.”
, I am old enough to be this kid’s mother. What if I had an adrogynous name and was some Mark Foley perv surfing for good-looking teen boys?