Right now, Facebook is in a roll. I actually signed up there when some of my machinima-directing friends made a group there for they find the site cool. I didn't, and I left my account rotting there for four years. Then the Facebook asteroid suddenly crash landed in my country and put Friendster into extinction, and quickly everybody had Facebook accounts which were indefinitely wasted on playing one-track games for one-track minds.
Right now I don't use Facebook for leisure. I hate it because of all the Farmville requests, force-tagging me in photos, and people ditching proper IM platforms because they believe that the shitty embedded Java chat is better than a regular IM client. If I were to use Facebook, I'd use it to track someone, organize myself with other people, stalk someone, and arrange events. I think social organization is the only "productivity" you can get with Facebook. Too bad people missed that part because they were waiting for their sunflowers to grow in Farmville.
Oh, and about that stalking part, that's actually a very easy thing to do. I've been doing that even before I'm into Facebook. But it's not about ethical hacking and making your screen look like it's from the Matrix just to stalk someone. You just need some skills on human psychology.
Take advantage of a common Facebook tradition of accepting everybody who asks using a friend request. Create a fake profile, add a picture of a hot girl or a douchebag and load up all kinds of BS you could think of into that profile. Then start luring in the morons. Earn someone's trust, make him/her think you're his/her boyfriend/girlfriend, and invite him/her to meet at some public place. Then don't go there, build an excuse, and promise to meet up again. Repeat. That's just one of the many things you could do to destroy someone on Facebook. I could go into more damaging and dangerous techniques, but I wouldn't go into any more details for the safety of others.
That's all thanks to Facebook's shitty privacy settings, where, by default, your profile and all its useless information are visible in Facebook's growing public directory. Think of it as one big phonebook - everything you have written on Facebook that is set to public is accessible there - from seemingly harmless information like your name, your applications, your Farmville, to more serious ones like your complete address, your telephone/mobile numbers, etc.
I actually tried the trick of texting a complete stranger in Facebook - I used an old SIM card and jacked it in my PLDT WeRoam 3G Dongle, picked a random stranger in the Philippines, and I quickly found her mobile number. I texted random shit to that person using my computer, and she responds like a charm.
Are you afraid? Want to change your ways. I'm going to help you with that. Here's what you have to do:
1. Remove all sensitive information from your public profile. You can choose not to delete them, just set them to viewable by "Only Me".
2. Remove and unassociate unnecessary applications from your profile. Applications are always given full view of your information, and that's not good. Keep in mind that quizzes are separate applications, and I found them hard to remove from my profile. Right now I only have my useful desktop applications (TweetDeck, Pidgin, Miranda, Trillian, etc.)
3. Remove yourself from the Facebook public directory. This can be done by going to Privacy Settings > Applications... > Public Search. If you're under 18, the setting is turned off by default, however, it is wise to turn it completely off even if you're over 18.
4. Remove Instant Personalization. Instant Personalization is a feature used by partner websites that automatically updates your settings and profile there using your Facebook profile. This could save you some time, but it is potentially dangerous to your privacy. It is wise to turn them off, just go to Privacy Settings and you'll find it there.
5. Limit the amount of information accessible to your friends. It's not just your friends - it's also for the applications your friends use.
However, the best defense for your privacy on Facebook is, to not use Facebook at all. You can deactivate your account on Facebook, however, it's difficult to do so, as it takes quite a long time. Since I'm lazy and don't want to point you in a certain direction, I'm just gonna give you a "Let Me Google That For You" link.
Think Facebook is still safe? Here's the torrent that contains over 100 million Facebook profiles harvested by an efficient person named Ron Bowes. This isn't illegal in any way, because every user included in this database actually agreed to have their information displayed in public. It only takes a simple dataminer to automatically collect the data, because Facebook is not protecting public data and it makes them available to anyone for anyone to use in any way. Go, download the database, and look for your profile there. If you find it, change your privacy settings right away, if not, good job.
