Social Networking Danger
A social networking site is a web site where people can get together and talk, view each others profiles, and add friends. The premise is simple; get people connected. The sites come stock with a friend adding service, where you can request someone to be your friend and add them to your list for easy navigation back to their page. The commenting and messaging services are offered on almost all sites as well; this allows you to send a private message to someone, or send them a comment that everyone can view and then comment back on. The profile system is perhaps the biggest draw for most people though. This allows you to have your own web page and URL, and personalize it however you wish. There are many sites that will walk you through on how to do so, and if done well, can look quite professional and avant-garde.
While these sites have good intentions, sometimes they can slip up a little. For example, even though the services on the site are free, you will have advertisements wherever you go, and will have to click through one pretty much every time you navigate to a new page. Keep in mind though it is often the users who corrupt the site. The fact that you could easily impersonate anyone lures in many child predators who could easily pose as a friend and arrange a play date in real life. Also, it is quite easy to hack someone’s profile, as their security secret question is usually answered there. If you are wondering what their cat’s name is, you could probably look at their photos, and find one of their “cute cat Maxine.”
Everything you do on a social networking site goes through another source called FriendFeed. This site has every sites data on it, and holds all passwords, log-in names, and profile data. FaceBook, one of the most popular and widely used social networking site recently purchased this service. While it could explained as an easy write off because they use the site so often, the actual reasons could be much more insidious. FaceBook will now have more of your information than ever through FriendFeed, and guess what; they will profit from it. Their forty five million dollar investment will come back in just a matter of weeks as they sell off everyone’s personal data to online advertisers who buy this data so they can better and more effectively advertise to their users. Don’t be surprised if you see many more ads proliferated on the site than you normally do.
This represents a problem; more data means more ways to track you. A hacker could easily go onto your profile, or just buy some of your browsing habits and stalk you online. Use a change IP proxy to be untraceable though. An IP changer will make you invisible to a hacker, and thusly, you will remain safe online.
