Please Explain Why YOU Have a Facebook Account?

I pose that question for a couple of reasons. But they are all wrapped around security and the sanctity of your personal information. –

Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense division tracking the digital underworld say bogus and stolen accounts on the Facebook are now on sale in high volume on the black market. Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of Facebook, the social networking site that says it has sophisticated ways to defeat fake accounts.

During several weeks in February, iDefense tracked an effort to sell log-in data for 1.5 million Facebook accounts on several online criminal marketplaces, including one called Carder.su.

That hacker, who used the screen name “kirllos” and appears to deal only in Facebook accounts, offered to sell bundles of 1,000 accounts with 10 or fewer friends for $25 and with more than 10 friends for $45, says Rick Howard, iDefense’s director of cyber intelligence.

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and…

MINNEAPOLIS - Facebook is now sharing your personal profile information with third parties. For now, it’s just a few web sites, like the music site Pandora, and the consumer review site, Yelp.

Facebook is automatically sharing that information, without your consent. If you don’t want to share, you have to opt out.

University of Minnesota law professor and privacy expert Bill McGevern says it’s an important line in the sand. And for Facebook, with 600 million users, the stakes are high.

“Facebook is trying over and over to get this shared so Facebook becomes the center of the web,” said McGevern.

Facebook want to make money by selling user information.

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Either legally or otherwise your data is being proffered for sale. Are you sure you know who you are sharing that data with via third parties that you have no relationship with? Do you even know what is being done with the data? You ought to care, as it may mean you losing the next job or promotion. Forty-five Percent of Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates, CareerBuilder Survey Finds To be blunt about it, if you have a rant on FaceBook about anything you might as well write LOSER on the bottom of your resume.

I have never held a Facebook account as I read the TOS first and found it lacking. Besides these days it is both cheap and easy to setup your own site on the web where YOU have total control of both the content and how it is shared. Consider this post a friendly hint. But you have been forewarned.