Facebook has millions of users on a daily basis. If you register with Facebook you can find yourself quickly giving away huge volumes of valuable personal information. Think about it… Facebook knows your name, they know how old you are, they know if you’re male or female, they know your hometown, your postcode if you choose to give it away (although I doubt many users choose this), they know if you’re single, in a relationship or if it’s “just complicated” (and who isn’t!), married, divorced etc, they know your sexual orientation, etc. Ok so you can answer all these questions as honestly, dishonestly or vaguely as you like but from what I’ve seen people happily give accurate information about themselves as it’s their friends and potential friends who are going to see it- and no one else right? But what else does Facebook know? Well they know where you went to school, where you work, more sinisterly your religious and political views. From this we can start to build up a pretty valuable market profile. As I’m telling Facebook I may as well tell you now: I’m Female, 59, straight, single from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. From this information we can draw further assumptions – while I frequently receive a post from single men all over the world starting with: I came across your profile…I live in a reasonably wealthy area in downtown Amsterdam which is based on my location in Google maps so it’s a wild guess to presume that I’m white and probably earning enough income to afford to live on the canals. Although those “facts” might be far off the truth. So what else? Facebook knows what I look like, while I posted a picture of myself and they probably also know how I used to look a few years ago (when I was looking much younger). Probably most significantly they know who your friends are, they know how you know them, they know when you talk to them, what they look like and ultimately they know exactly the same information about them as they know about you- you’re interests, likes and dislikes and your friends tastes as well. Facebook knows your email address, so they know if you use Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail etc. Facebook knows your phone number so they could pretty easily work out your phone provider. Facebook has your IP address so they could work out your ISP. Facebook knows where you’ve arrived at the site from so they know what search engine you use (enter Yahoo And Google to the bidding war), what browser you’re on, Facebook even know if you’re facing some visually or learning disabilities from the settings on your browser. Facebook knows when I’m logging in and from where so they know the hours I work, if I’m using the internet at work, the pages I leave Facebook to go to or the pages I come from so they know what other sites I look at. I can set my current status and tell Facebook exactly what I’m doing and even what mood I’m in or how I’m feeling today. Recently I even read from a respectable source that people who aren’t present on Facebook are most likely to be some kind of criminals and want to be “off the radar” for obvious reasons. In other words…if you don’t show up on Facebook you look a bit suspicious in the first place. Think about that!… so we all love to be on Facebook to share and connect! Ok…so you get the picture by now, one last thing though, is your Facebook password the same as your email account password, your internet and telephone banking password, every other password you use in your daily life (because I also read that even governmental institutions are making that same mistake and it’s very easy to guess passwords…that even a 4-year old could guess!). Recently in a television program they showed how you could easily hack an account and what huge consequences that might have! Just for the facts on the show they changed the complete heating system of a school and put it on the highest level just when a lot of kids were going to do their examinations. They were sweating much more than usual because they turned up the heating slowly so in the end it became quite unpleasant. End of the story was that people were unable to properly do their job or examination. Another item was to hack the security for watermanagement and if your intentions are not good…they showed how relatively easy it was to open a (password) protected gate, which could be catastrophic for thousands of people being overflooded by water. It’s a major concern for all governments cyber crime departments and securities. So…how much more information do you want to give away on Facebook on your personal level? We have to be more aware and realistic about the consequences of our own behaviour online. What about the project X parties? I recently read about a teenager that invited some friends through social media in the newly build home of his parents. When the party was over…the house was totally destroyed! Here in the Netherlands we also had a project X party where people were afraid of the thousands of people that responded to celebrate the birthday of a girl who put her party invitation on her Facebook profile without realizing the consequences of her actions. (and not aware of her own profile on Facebook). What’s the risk here? (that’s something that particular teenager will not ask her/himself anymore!). The point I’ve been making tediously through this post is that we should be more careful about what information we give away so easily and to whom. It’s the way the internet is going and I believe we have to know the downsize effects too, like identity theft, phishing, terroristic attacks, love/dating scams or child molestors. Despite knowing what I know about security or the Facebook likes I