How Safe Is Facebook?

I’ve been a member of Facebook since the school restrictions were lifted and have really enjoyed my experience having a Facebook page.  I’ve managed to reunite with several friends from high school and college, keep in touch with distant cousins that I haven’t seen for awhile, and even managed to take several relationships I’ve made on this site to a whole new level by getting to my readers on a more personal level through Facebook. 

One of the great things about the system Facebook uses is how friends work, giving users full control over who has access to their personal information.   The problem is, people seem to treat it like MySpace and accept every invite for friendship.  

Webware recently wrote about a Facebook ID probe that was done by Sophos, where they tried to get a feel of how many people made all their personal information available to people that didn’t even know them.   Here are the results according to Webware:

Sophos created a fake Facebook profile, under the name ‘Freddi Staur’ (’ID Fraudster’ with the letters rearranged), and randomly requested 200 members to be friends with ‘Freddi.’ Out of those 200, 87 accepted the friend request and 82 of those gave ‘Freddi’ access to “personal information” such as e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, and school or work data. Presumably, the other five had restricted ‘Freddi’ to limited profile access, which many users select for bosses, parents, or people they don’t know in real life.

Its interesting to see that even in today’s world, people still place little effort into protecting their personal information.    A couple things I do:

1. Take full advantage of the limited profile.   You can go into the settings and establish what information you will reveal, then give people you aren’t really close to access to your limited profile.   This way they can’t view a lot of your information, but they can still leave comments and stuff.
2. Remove the year from your birthday.  Knowing a birthday isn’t quite the same as a social security number, but it is crucial to someone trying to steal your identity. 
3. Don’t give your full address or phone number.   Just display your City, State, County, etc.
4. Don’t use your main e-mail address.  Instead establish a designated e-mail address that you use only for signing up for services. 

If you insist on displaying these things, make sure they are not displayed to people that view your limited profile, then start using the limited profile. 

Do you feel safe on Facebook?