FaceBook Just Got Real!!, page 5

I must respectfully point out that many things are being exaggerated on this thread and that doesn't help people with their education and denial of ignorance.

You are not going to be able to use the very low resolution photo of a person's eye for biometric identification. Even if you were, with which database would you be cross-referencing? Biometric passport databases? You know how to get into those right? Also biometric identification is nowhere near as accurate as Hollywood would have you believe, it generally has a very high rate of failure which is why several measurements are often used in combination (fingerprint, iris scan, facial recognition etc).

A car performing text-to-voice to read out Facebook messages does not enable you to know where the user is going! What string of logic led you to that conclusion?

Knowing somebody's IP address (how will you get that by the way, as a standard user of this site without access to server logs or similar?) is not going to let you know about every message they ever post online.

You can prevent other people from tagging you on Facebook, it's a setting in your privacy preferences. You can also de-tag yourself from any pictures you don't want to be associated with.

"ALL the new digital cameras (including cellular phone cameras) geo tag the date, time AND location of every picture you take" - that's just not true! For a digital camera to track your location it needs to have a GPS unit built in, and this is by no means standard although I admit it is becoming more common. Also, this functionality can be easily switched off. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but if you are going to be emphatic enough to write ALL in caps you should be able to back up what you're saying.

"Even if your account is private TPTB and Facebook staff (not to mention hackers) can still see your information and/or pictures." - the same applies to everything you ever do online, staff at your ISP can see all of your traffic so I don't see the reason for singling out social networking here.

There are a lot of assumptions about Facebook users here. Not everybody wants to have a massive number of friends - I often delete some of mine to keep the number manageable when I find that I am not using the medium with those individuals very much. I don't put info like addresses and phone numbers on there. I do find it useful for keeping in touch with certain people in a light, casual but useful way. I still use the phone, I still go out and see people, this is just another medium on top of those things, it doesn't have to replace them. Some of my friends prefer keeping in touch online and I want to stay in contact with those people.

I'm no huge fan of Facebook but almost all of your arguments can be applied to all information people disclose about their lives, be it over the telephone, in filling out forms or online. I'm not saying skilled, targeted hackers couldn't get at a lot of the info you are talking about, but you make it sound like any script kiddie with an internet connection can know every detail of your life just because you decided to join Facebook. The best catburglar will be able to get into your house, the best private investigator will be able to find out stuff about your life, but they have to have a good reason, and if the reason is good enough you can't stop them, and the same applies to hackers.

I was victim of a stalker for a year of my life and he ended up trying to kill my girlfriend (and I'm not exaggerating) so I am not talking from a place of ignorant bliss here either. This was nearly 10 years ago and had nothing to do with Facebook - stalkers existed before the internet was around. Reading through this thread (thanks for it by the way, because it was interesting at least) I can't help finding just_julie's arguments to be the more balanced and rational. People have to have a reason to target you, and while it is wise to be aware, Fear Makes the Wolf Grow Bigger!

I don't intend any disrespect, just felt that some of the statements on this thread needed a bit of balance bringing to them.