03/11/09
Once again, while everybody is saying hello, I'm saying goodbye. For a short time I had a profile on Facebook. It was created at the behest of people I know who use the site in the typical manner: to share pictures and maintain ongoing conversations with those they allow to be their Friends. Social networking sites such as Facebook are apparently overtaking plain old e-mail as a way to stay in touch.
After embellishing my profile with a cartoon-like drawing of myself--which (I hope) really doesn't look like me--and links to nealjconway.com and Google results for Tales From Old Bethesda (now a collectors' item which can now only be found with used book dealers), I took Facebook for a test drive.
The test drive lasted for several hours stretched over a week. This is the first big problem I have with Facebook: it can eat up big gobs of one's day. I don't even have the time to write new material for this web site. And creating posts for nealjconway.com, instead of writing more books, is something of a waste of time in itself.
My hours on Facebook were squandered determining how much I can find out about other members who are not my Friends and conversely, how much people who are not in my Friend list can find out about me. What I learned was pretty scary.
Facebook's privacy settings enable a member to restrict profile content either to Friends or to Friends of Friends. I should say that I found the privacy settings to be somewhat confusing.
A bit about Friends of Friends: Another big Facebook turnoff for me was logging in to my home page and seeing photos of people I detest and want nothing to do with being served up in the "People You May Know" window. Facebook has a way of blocking enemies so that your name doesn't turn up for them if they search for it, nor is your presence supposed to be indicated in a mutual Friend's list of Friends.
While full profile content can be restricted, any unblocked member of Faceook can see any other member's name and photo along with that member's list of Friends. That any other member can see one's list of Friends is what's really scary.
There may be a way to keep one's Friend list from being viewed by members in general, but most members choose not to use it.
Who Knows Whom
Thanks to the Internet, practically everybody now lives in a glass house. Do a Google search of your name and if little or nothing turns up, you either don't do anything or you're a web savant who's obsessed with keeping his presence off the web. Public records, including court cases and newspaper archives, are on-line. Pay some money and you can even find where people with unpublished addresses live.
Social networking sites such as Facebook also tell users who knows whom. And who knows whom can be very significant information, very valuable information, very dangerous information in the wrong hands.
I ran through FB's search engine the names of people--schoolmates, former coworkers--I hadn't thought of in years. Several names and faces came up in the search results. In a few cases, it was a member's list of Friends that was accessible through those search results that enabled me to confirm that the member was truly the individual I had searched for.
Legitimate, if unwelcome, ways in which a list of Friends could be useful: a fundraiser could discover that member A has rich Friends B,C, and D. The list of one's Friends may also be handy to reporters or criminal investigators.
People with malevolent intentions could make some tracks with the Friend list, too.
Let's say that A has it in for B and wants to harass or harm B in some way. A joins Facebook of which B is a member. While A can't see B's profile without B accepting A as a Friend first, A can see B's list of Friends which includes C and D. A knows C and D and may be on good terms with them. A contacts C or D and says, Hey, I wanna get in touch with A, but I lost A's address. Do you have it?
If A is really lucky, he'll get the whole street address. If he just gets a phone number, he can do a reverse look-up or spend the fifty bucks and get a street address. It's harder if he gets only an e-mail address, less hard if it's a work e-mail address.
Another example: Let's say that Creep E knows that F has a friend, G. G is not a member of Facebook. E joins Facebook and creates a false profile of G and, until he or she is caught, has access to some, or perhaps a lot of, F's personal life.
The most insidious thing about the Internet is that it enables losers and the malicious to project themselves as something that they are not. Another reason why nothing will ever beat meeting and getting to know people in person.
Facebook does not allow members who are aged 13 and under, however members of high-school age may be vulnerable.
Schools generally do not post the names and photos of students on-line, however they often post the names of teachers. Many teachers are now members of Facebook and use it to stay in touch with their students. This means that the students are in the teachers' Friends lists and that their names and pictures will be available to any Facebook member. All Pervert H has to do is get the name of a teacher from a school web site, look him or her up on Facebook and he also has names and photos of students at the school.
Facebook may offer a way for high-school kids and their teachers to restrict who sees the Friend list, but as I wrote above, the Friend lists of every Facebook member I looked at was viewable.
Thus, as Groucho Marx sang, "Hello, I must be going..."
Copyright 2009 by Neal J. Conway