Rogue Idea

so earlier i ran into an article that came up about how facebook and myspace are used by predators to stalk kids. even though at the very beginning of all this ‘internet’ stuff there was LOTS of news almost every night about kids being lured out and molested, kidnapped, etc - it still happens now but its not news worthy anymore to where they would report or watch out for more cases like that. i’m sure it still happens though. anyways i just wanted to note that after seeing something i saw today that facebook is a VERY good stalking tool if you were trying to find someone.

first thing is you can find people through other people. if you were looking for someone you saw hanging out with person A, you can find person A, then search through their friends and then find the person you were looking for. from that you already know what school and what that person’s name is. you can have privacy settings now, but seriously if someone knows what school you went to, they could just find more school related resources outside of facebook.

second thing is people put their real PHONE NUMBERS on there. yes, phone numbers. i dont have mine on there but a lot of people do. with a phone number you can pinpoint at least a city that the person is in and even an address in some cases.

then another thing is what i saw today - i’ve seen this a few times before but i didnt really think about it this way until today cause of that article i saw. anyways basically say someone you know(or that i know , hehe lol) drops their cell phone in the water while having a party on their yacht. lets not talk about how that couldve happened but anyways so then they get on facebook, which is where they go on to keep in touch with people online. and they start a group that is PUBLIC and invite everyone on their list of friends to join so that they can go and see the message and leave their cell phone numbers so it can be entered into a new phone. granted some people email the message privately, but MANY people just join the group and then post the number on the wall. a lot of these groups are public, so that means i can go on there and now i know the personal cell phone numbers of lots of people even if they dont know who i am. another thing is since this is connected to schools (at least most of it is) a lot of people use their real name or their real name is in their email address that can be displayed. so now i know your real name, the school you go to, who youre friends with, and your cell phone number so i can call you while breathing heavy.

and since facebook now lets people who arent in any registered schools sign up, basically that just opens up the door for more crazies to join in. both facebook and myspace have ‘privacy’ controls now, but seriously even if i cant see your profile i already know what you look like and what school you go to. and the size of a school is not even the size of a pin on a map so it really narrows down the area.

annddddddd the whole point of this - is to say that today i put my profile as private on facebook =) even though it was already pretty private but now i made it even more private. facebook is probably for more ‘older kids’ though while myspace is like …anyone who can get on the computer. facebook is like upperclassmen from high schools and college students, which i guess would be less appealing to peds and crazy pyscho child molestors but it is basically PERFECT for finding anyone in the right age bracket and is where more people put up more ‘real/true’ information on their profiles and use ‘real pictures’ of themselves.