Big Brother on the Net

I suppose it is inevitable with all the hacking and filtering and paypal account closing still its a bit sad.
Facebook has decided it wants cellphone numbers to VERIFY your account ...

That was it for me, bye bye Facebook. Guard yourself my friends, it may be small things but it is a slippery slope.

Thats why everyone should get a prepaid phone with none of their real info on it. You can still use facebook and other parts of the internet just be smart about it.

Well I mean to be honest the phone number is odd...but think about the concept of a social network site like Facebook and Myspace

You create a website all about you, typically your likes and dislikes aybe your views or opinions..Your location and picture full name and whatever else have you.
Regardless of phone number we pretty much willingly put all of our things out on the internet for anyone to see..
Hell there are programs to download to run a backround check with anyone you IM or chat with online in realtime that I seen a commerical for.

I own a Myspace and I state my beliefs on them aswell as having a Music Myspace where I proudly stand behind the messages in my music.
Honestly nowadays I think if Big Brother wants to they will find you regardless of how much your willing to particiapate or not unless you are completley off the grid

On the grid or not, certainly a choice we all make. Its simply a choice you should be aware of.
Actually I have a prepaid phone but I still don't want a million txt message adverts showing up on it. And it just rubs wrong

my facebook account has not asked me to do this at all. I don't know what kind of facebook you are using...

I would quit too if I had to give them my phone number. There's no reason they should need to verify your account with a cell phone number. That's absurd!

It's another bit of data. We know that TPTB are datamining Facebook, MySpace, Usenet, Forums etc, cross-referencing with other databases (government, credit, etc). Every extra bit of information you provide helps this datamining process by increasing the reliability of links between one dataset and another.

For all I know, Facebook is being genuine about why it's doing this. But giving up any item of data about yourself is dangerous.

The request for it comes up when you try to comment on an article or group. Doesn't seem to effect things like wall posts but I tried twice to make a comment then gave up and left.
There was news yesterday somewhere about facebook having a big problem with spammers, likely thats the excuse for doing it ...prove you are human.

I imagine this could also be a move to unify cell phones and major social networking sites into one...
With the popularity of smartphones over the past few years and mobile everything I'm assuming they plan on maybe gettin rid of usernames and passwords and just have your account literally an extension of you as your cell phone number is...
I think we'll be seeing alot more information wanting in exchange for convience or complience..
I mean have you guys seen the program/application that can tell you and pinpoint on a map the exact location of a picture you have taken of someone or somewhere at that very time?
Real time tracking is becoming creepy maybe im glad I dont have a facebook afterall...though I'm really not happy about myself owning a myspace either