Are you paranoid?

Nope, not a chance in hell.
Only true way of staying 'safe' is not being online at all.

Personally I don't give a hoot what my "info" are used for. I only give out non essential info any way.

If you don't want your information to go viral, keep it to yourself.

In the United States, there is one entity that trumps any other company on the Web. If I were paranoid, I would be more worried about the government, more so of the CIA. They have their paws into everything.

it depends on what typ of info it is : eg name age DOB and income:  I always give  fake names, and lie about me age  cos you don't know who is out there , and income where ever I can I put none of their business  or leave it blank , but if  I have to I will only give what I think should be given .

Me, paranoid?  Nah, not me!!

Just cos everybody's out to get me, don't mean I'm paranoid.

Just cos I don't trust politicians or government employees, don't mean I'm paranoid.

Just cos I don't trust bankers and/or coppers, don't mean I'm paranoid.

And just cos I don't trust the Evil Empire, Google, it don't mean I'm paranoid.

Nope, I think I'm pretty well adjusted and have a well balanced view on life....

.... now has anyone seen my tinfoil hat?

So was the article catering for the lowest common denominator? The above quote seems to suggest they were. Who in their right mind is stupid enough to have listed your address and phone number with Facebook, or any other Social media site??
Those that do so, well i won't say deserve to be in strife, but they certainly won't garner any sympathy from me.

I'm with Mrs_starkers, i seldom give my actual DOB, name or any other personal info to any site, SD being one of the very few to have my actual details.

I laughed at " More and more job applicants are being asked to surrender their Facebook passwords by prospective employers." No Job is that important to compromise your information, deactivate the account and inform the prospective employer you do not have a FB.

With a few sensible (common sense) steps, i think one can have a small amount of security on the internet, it's not so much what info "they" are getting, but is it any use to them. Simple things like using a debit card tied to another account other than your primary for all your online purchases and using good password management along with not using any email ending in msn/live/hotmail is good for a start.

I with you on that I wouldn't give them my password.  tell them to give me theirs 

then again without the E-Mail address the Password will not work..

If i was applying for a job that required this of me, well i would ask specifically what is it in my FB you are interested in, and i may...may..log in and show them my FB page. But I would do so under the caveat that I will be the one logging in and i will be clearing browser history and cookies after doing so.

What's next though? Handing over your phone so they can look through all your messages to see what you have sent? Allowing them access to your email to see what emails you receive?

Why stop there?! Why not come to my place and look through my browser history to see what websites i have visited! Whilst your at it, my garbage bin is over there, want to rummage through my old mail as well???

Sad thing is, those above examples have probably been suggested already and are not as far fetched as it might first seem. So unless the job is in the west wing of the White House or some equivalent stature, that has a certain level of security and/or a higher standard, then i find it ludicrous.

PS - Since when did freedom of speech stop being a corner stone of the western world? If i don't like my job, employer or boss, then i should be able to express those opinions freely, be that online or not. As long as I'm not slanderous in that opinion then whats it matter?

@Neilo and DC i agree with you but if you take a close look at the modern social network the big one especially you will see that people use their smart phones to check their stuff... This is the tricky part once you surrendered your password or even if you did not they can trace you they will have your cell phone number anyway and the rest is just waiting and observing.
DC thats not correct... if they have your profil name, or if they do find your profil they will soon or later be able to enter your acc.
The worst thing is that most companys provide information to third...end result spam on your phone your mail and your home address

are you sure about that I can't login with My name it wants my E-maill address.

ya tell about it Discover this month has sent me 4 apps to get their Credit card .. and it's only the 16th well when I got the last one

don't those damn  already know I have 2 from them.. time to pay it off and close them both. 

when I get 6 of them I am going to put them all in an envelop and send them back to them..

with a letter telling them I now no long want your Cards in my wallet

All this really does, is it shows how ingrained FB has become in our social lives. That it now has got to be such a concern to affect ones job or education proves it has grown to powerful. That being said, someone has to be fairly naive to post on your social network sites anything that you do not want the general public knowing, and that includes your employer! As a rule, one should never post something that you wouldn't say out in public.

Rolo, i don't get this part.

I don't follow you here. My employer, by having my phone number cannot log into my FB or track me. Perhaps i'm misunderstanding what your trying to say. Regardless of how i check my FB, how would my phone number make a difference, unless of course one is silly enough to provide it to Facebook (or whatever social media you use)

I do agree though, that alot of social media sites sell/share or use themselves, your info to spam you endlessly. FB does have some protection from this in it's settings, but you run the risk of that happening just be using the internet. The onus is on the user to be mindful of what you give out and where.
I should hope though that no employers are taking part in this action though. That would be a huge breach of privacy. One does not expect your employer to do anything with your personal details but maintain their own files. (even then, i do give as little as possible to my employers, but that's because i am paranoid!)


For this, and other reasons is why i use an email with my social media sites that's not my maim email. I like to call it my spam email, an email address that i use to log into web sites, but do not use for my own correspondence or other important matters. (that email is rarely given out, only reputable sites have it)
But again, thats always a risk when using the net, and with just some small amount of work, you can reduce that risk greatly.

Nope. Happy weekend, old mate.

 

An excellent solution, Neilo.

 

I was really enjoying the different thoughts and comments. right from reply 1 to reply 10. Now I got to reply 11 and saw that pic and my morning just turned to shit. The least you could have done is wear a baseball cap instead of your left over tinfoil from you lunch.

You should have seen the pic before Doc edited his post! I was wishing my monitor wasn't in HD!!

 

My laptop auto blocked the image. The tin foil hat gave it the heebie jeebies.

hehehe oh I forgot to let you know Dave  starkers head got too big for the cap so I resorted to using tinfoil don't worry tho the tinfoil was clean or was it, I can't remember

sorry i wasnt able to access the forum section yesterday to answer it always gave me an error.
what i meant with the phone is that your boss may have your cellphone number having the number or the name of your profile on a social network page leads to more information...
then if you surrender your password they will be able to search for your phone number what may leads to your nickname and if they can do that its only a short time until they will get your email info... An example I once had a tagged.com account and you can still find information about that account on Google with one simple search having that search result you will be able to gain more info with the info found you will be then again to find even more...

FB hacks exist and they also work...while you don’t need them if you know enough about the person ( kids /pets/ hobby’s/ favourite places and so on ...) You would be astounded how many people use these things as pass...

Another example i can give: I used to play an online mmorpg and played it for over 5 years intensively with a couple of friends. I never provided any information about my login details email address or anything else...In that game strangers came up and started talking in chat...asking you what your name is and what your hobby’s are for example...paranoid as I am i did not answer the questions and quickly changed to another topic...others did and got hacked, 
I always said that providing any form of info will sooner or later lead to a successful hack even if it is only a failure in keeping your stuff secret. I was save for over 5 years and then after time even i did fall for such a trick and my account was gone. ( the fun thing is that they only got one piece of the puzzle from me and then they contacted a friend and told him that they urgently needed to talk to me and if he could give them my email address and then they closed the circle ) Simply by talking and providing information of a period without knowing.
..what i try to say is if you post to much or provide mass amount of  personal information you will be sooner or later transparent like a window...

Go online under an alias, false name, email and such but no other info.

An ersatz ID is all you need.

I'm annoyed.

My wife is annoyed.

Together, we're a pair o' noyeds.

I think I annoy her a lot more than she annoys me 

Cure for o'noyed syndrome. First look for a sunny day. Then look for a cookies jar. Third open fridge and locate, if previously purchased, if not any cool bev will do, Lemon Ice Tea. Fourth...take said cookie jar, aforementioned Lemon Ice Tea or equivalent, go out into backyard or what suffices as one, perhaps a local park with swings,,,gotta have swings. Pour two tumblers ice tea or equivalent, open cookie jar, sit on swing or bench or grass, whichever comes first and indulge.

Am I paranoid? Nope. But cool company sees to that.

Ahh ok Rolo, i got ya now. Yeah the dangers of being hacked with just your name is huge, let alone any other peice of info you give out. I don't have FB on my phone, i don't trust it.
Like i said, if FB and the dangers of you information getting into the hands of hackers, has become this much of a concern, it's time to dump it. Of course if your vigilante, then you can protect yourself quite well. I'm confidant using FB and gmail since i am very aware of what information i have "out there".
though, of course, no one is perfect, and everyone at some time has given out more than they would have liked to. always a risk the site you have given your details to can be hacked (SONY) so no matter how well you protect your self, the danger is always there.

Doc has a great thread up about internet traffic and ho much of it is bots and hackers.