Facebook Intelligence Gathering

Thanks to Air33 for the link.

This is not surprising, and it's not just Facebook -- MySpace is also being datamined by Big Brother, as are lots of other public forums. And of course, there's nothing to be done to prevent this except not participating, which also sucks. Creating fake profile info is a good idea, as is making sure your real name is not associated with your pages. The info may be around for the rest of our lives in some database or another, and many people are already finding out the hard way that their party preferences are costing them job opportunities.

In the pre-Web days, the cops used to have to snatch your phone book to find out who you knew. Now they need only your public friend list and maybe your phone. So it's not just yourself you put at risk when you publish your life online, it's everyone you know.