Social Websites: Potential Pitfalls for the Naive and Gullible

My four adult children and four grandchildren all maintain active "Face Book" sites and occasionally chastise me for being old fashioned and out of touch for refusing to follow their example. They point out the advantages such as staying in touch with old friends, making new friends, updating activities and physical changes within the family. They roll their eyes and scoff at my concern that social websites have greatly increased occurrences of identity theft, personal attacks, crime victimization, and fraud.

My specific concerns and personal evaluation regarding participation in social websites are as follows:

Friends - People who think they have a lot of friends just think they have a lot of friends.

Acquaintances - Some associates may not actually be who or what they claim. For instance, a beautiful young female fashion model may actually be a 250 lb. male truck driver.

Too much information is a dangerous thing. - Example: A friend of one of my daughters recently posted a series of pictures documenting her family's two-week vacation at the beach. They returned home to discover that their house had been broken into and several expensive items had been stolen. I cannot help but presume that the fact that they had also posted their new address upon moving into said house ten months prior to proudly sharing their vacation fun on-line may have had a direct relation to the robbery.

I would hope that social website users would consistently utilize common sense and extreme caution when determining what and how much information to share. Human nature being what it is, I presume that this is not actually the case among a good many participants.