This is not related to flutes, but anyway we discussed this issue some time ago.

Now there are new articles circulating on the web, regarding proven (?) cases of criminal use of facebook data in Mexico and Argentina (as far as i know) with results of kidnapping and murder.

It is recommended to avoid publishing personal data that could hint to social status, habits, schedules and other private information that could be used by criminals against social network users.

This is not paranoia, just common sense. Sorry to possibly disturb you with this out-of-subject warning.

Thanks for the warning Jose. I am very wary now of all this stuff going on on the internet. I have pretty much wiped out my facebook and myspage page along with even my profile on here. I have had a crazy person after me for a few years and they find me everywhere I go on on the internet, so I can relate all too well. (They don't bother me as I just ignore them though.) It is sad that nothing is safe anymore and people can't afford to trust anyone. But yes, just to be on the safe side it is better off probably not to even have one of these pages as even though you can set things to private, hackers can always find a way around that too.

i always knew they were a bit dodgy, but i am getting odd mssages on my bebo and myspace from people i don't know, so i am in the process of cancelling my accounts

I do not use any of those sites so I have no direct experience; but anyway it seems that they are very weakly protected as for privacy, if they are protected at all. The data is somehow available to people who are not necessarily high level hackers.

I have an article explaining the problems and also the way Facebook could be using/selling the data their members post. The article says Facebook becomes owner of all the data for ever, including the cases of deceased people. And this, with the willing consent of their members, according to the small letter of the contract the members accept.

I do not like to sound too much alarming,but I feel concerned about these things and many others I would rather not get into, such as Gmail "permanent" free and infinite storage capacity of Email our messages.

I could distribute this article to those interested, but the version I have is in Spanish and it is too long for me to translate it into English at this moment. If you can read this language and are interested please PM me.

In the link below there are portions of this article, by Ari Melber (in English). It is centred on Facebook issues and not on several other social networks, such as Hi5, Myspace,
Sonico, etc. I believe that the problem is wider and more serious than just Facebook.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-melber/does-facebook-own-you-for_b_86115.html



<Added>

of Email our messages = of our Email messages

With just a quick search on Facebook, I've already found out the location of 2 members of this forum. It's really not hard to find any information on the internet these days. It's best just to be aware that the information you put out goes out to anyone, harmless people, and the not so harmless people.

As a result of this, I've changed my information....

I think I will too.

"If you accept, then they have access to all your data including your contacts. "

That's why they have the acceptance process. Don't accept notices from people you don't know!! And you can remove any friend at any time. Common sense goes a long way. Also, don't put any information about your physical location anywhere on the internet, and then you can't really be found

I have just changed my information! I feel a little safer now, but even with all of the privacy settings on social networks there is still a risk that someone could find your information. You can never be too careful.

well actualy its even easier to get someones personal data from the web from a single email it can be tracked directly to the original sender via there ip adress and from the ip adress you can obtain there full name and registered adress phone number and all other details that was used to obtain there internet service as most people have this linked to there home phone

the amount of aparently personal information you can obtain via the web is is extensive you just have to know where and how to go about it.

i design networks and computers for a hobby and allso write my own multimedia software and if you know what your doing you can do anything

one way to help protect your personal info on your computer is to use a password containing letters and numbers as it can increase the time it would take to hack your password from a few hrs to a few weeks and change your password a a regular basis the reason being is if someone uses a redily avalable programe from the net to break your password it way take the program a couple weeks to crack your password now if its changed during the process the program has to start again so by changeing it on a regular basis your allways 1 step ahead

if you use just numbers or just letters it can be cracked in a matter of hours so allways use a combo of both and to strengthen it use upper case and lower case letters

Most personal IP addresses are dynamically assigned from a poll of addresses each ISP receives and in most cases and I believe they cannot be tracked to your private street address except by the ISP itself.

I keep turning off my ADSL to save energy when I put my new netbook PC to hibernate and very often this causes a change in my IP address, several times a day.

High level hacking is one thing and practically nobody is immune to this, as has been shown by the case of hackers and even teenagers that could break into fbi, nasa and other highly secured networks.

But he case with social networks is different. Even with no hackers involved and through the process of social/human "engineering", their members/users are taken to give freely and willingly important personal data that they would normally keep private.

I have just read that most Human resources departments now use these social networks to gather information of candidates (and possibly employees) to discard those that may seem inappropriate.

For this reason,it is recommended never to write things like "Fed-up with my work" or "I would kill my boss/my teacher/my band director, etc.)", because these things are read by people you would not like to have reading them.