Not while I have my tinfoil hat on.

Doesn't facebook have privacy setting anyway? So that only people on your friends lists can see what you've posted? So how can anyone find out anything about you if they can't see your personal page?

Also this. I mean unless you're posting up bank account/social security/national insurance numbers, your general banking and online purchase information, email, phone numbers and your home address then what's the problem?

Or am I just being naive and missing the point entirely?

You mean these 170 options? Which Facebook changes back to the default (fairly open) settings every time they update?

It's a little more invasive than that. You've see the 'Like' button on sites like Cracked? Even if you don't click it, Facebook knows you were there. Cracked got onto my list of applications without me doing anything. So, to a degree, Facebook knows where you go. And they are more than willing to share this info along with more.

If someone can get your name, location, and birth date, they can find out a lot of other information about you, actually.

Currently searching for the article I read. I'll post a link in an edit.

Edit: Not the one I was thinking of, but it'll work: http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home...ow-on-facebook

Facebook stuff has been used by the corporation I work for in arbitration against employees. So yes.

Anyway your point would work if looking up this kind of information was difficult enough that only someone with significant interest in you would be able to or want to find it, or only someone interesting/popular/famous would be worth looking up. This is not the case. It takes like two seconds and no effort. You can do it out of sheer boredom.

Edit: Also I hear identity theft is big these days.

You can lock down your facebook privacy settings to the point where your profile won't show up on a Google search, or a search within Facebook if you want. The only thing Facebook's guilty of, as far as I can tell, is not making those privacy settings default. But they're easy enough to change.

The problem isn't Facebook. The problem is people willfully revealing things on the internet, regardless of whether they believe it's secure.

I have one, as secure as I want it to be, and still, I don't post anything on it that is likely to ever cause me grief in the future. I have an especially strict personal policy of never adding anyone with whom I work. I've known several people who do this, and worse, add bosses, and then end up in hot water when their 'sick' days turn out to be somewhat more eventful than is reasonably expected.

Maybe I have some of that mostly benign data going towards Facebook's advertisers, but honestly, that has never been much of a bother to me. Most of these sites don't charge for use, and they do have to finance themselves somehow. If someone wants to pay Facebook so they can direct ads to me based upon the relatively benign things I say, more power to them. Chrome blocks all the ads via extensions anyway, so no tug on my nuts. ;D

The problem is a world where you can't reveal stuff about yourself (publicly or privately) without being afraid of not being accepted or being profiled or whatever. That's why I post what-the-hell-ever-I-want and more as big 'fuck you' to everyone who it might piss off or annoy etc.

EDIT: I don't mean that I actively try to offend people or anything, simply that not being able to be open about every little thing I feel like sharing with whoever I want to is one of the few things that truly pisses me off. A possible employer checks my facebook and finds something that makes them reconsider hiring me? As long as it's not a criminal offense what I've done; fuck them, I don't wanna work for them in that case.

I dunno, I think there's a point to be made that different datasets about one person that's stored by many different sites on many different servers isn't quite as potentially bad as having it all in one place.

Google is always watching us. And they know what you do with your free time.

Joke aside, I was thinking of going on Face book...

And changed my mind after reading this. As the whole, we know everything about you thing is a bit creepy.