Chris, I am amazed at how calmly you seem have taken this. I have said on the Lockergnome website more than once that I take security on the web very seriously, to the point of paranoia. I often receive invitations from people I have never heard of asking me to be their ‘friend’ on these sites. I do not frequent them because of their obvious lack of security. I also do not like them because they aren’t interested in monitoring their sites, they just want to make money from advertising by their huge membership. I always send such unsolicited invitations to them, requesting they investigate who has invited me and why. To me this is every bit as undesirable as ‘phishing’ and ’419′ scams. It is a dangerous premise, and should be discouraged. Anybody who receives one of these invitations should refer them back to the originating site and hopefully they will take note and insist such contacts can only be made through a system that allows the recipient (and perhaps the sender) to remain anonymous. I know it is easy to ignore these invitations, but it is equally easy to ignore ‘phishing’ attempts, but the fact is that they are not ignored and that they continue shows that they are effective. If you wish to invite a friend to one of these sites, surely you can contact them directly?
Perhaps I am old fashioned and prefer to meet friends the old fashioned way, socialising in the real world and exchanging contact details. That way you can make a judgement about a person based on how they behave, not what they write about themselves. I am particularly concerned about my two children, both young adults (daughter 17 years old, son 15 years old) who have hundreds of contacts on messenger and social networking sites (I insist on monitoring their on-line activity) and they do not know where they live, or who they are aside from the information given on the website. I have explained to them how I could post a picture from the internet on one of these sites and claim to be a 16 year old girl. I did an experiment recently and joined Bebo under four different aliases on the same night, and was not queried about any of them, even though it was done from the same PC within minutes of each other. I know this could be a good thing as it allows personal anonymity, but it also leaves it open to abuse by undesirables. Let the watchword be ‘ Beware’. Many of our young (and older) people have been raised on internet contact, but are not made aware of the inherent dangers. A little more pro-active warning might have been desirable in your otherwise excellent (as most are) communication. Thanks for taking the time to review my comments.