Back in May, I decided to get a myspace page. Quite frankly, I thought I was too old but a lot of my friends and co-workers had a page and I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch with everyone. As I have previously stated, I was thankful that I had signed up because I found some of my old friends that I had lost touch with. I thought I had all of my privacy settings set up and that it would be hard to find me. That wasn’t the case. Several people including an ex-boyfriend found me. I don’t know how he searched and found my information. Or maybe it was through an indirect friend. Either way, I wasn’t happy about it. I thought about canceling my account. Initially, I left my page public for about a week but the strange e-mails that I was getting, made me uncomfortable.

This whole process reminded me that you have to be careful what you put on the web. Everyone is literally one click away from someone accessing your information. Naturally, I was hesitant to even get a facebook account but it was a necessity in this class. So I signed up. I feel that facebook has better privacy settings and search options then my space. I feel that myspace allows anyone to search you where as for facebook, you have to be a registered member to look for anyone on their site. Remember Miss New Jersey who was being black mailed because she had a facebook account and some of her “suggestive” pictures she had placed on the social networking site were being used against her? Gone are the days of privacy. If you think  what you post or an old picture can’t come back to haunt you, this is a perfect example of how it can.

When one of my best friends meets a guy for the first time, she goes home and googles him to see if any information comes up. I laughed at her for doing it but was thankful that she had done some research on the last guy that she was starting to date. Her google search brought up information about his personal and professional life that she might not have been privy to if she had not done a “background” check on him. Needless to say, this one didn’t last very long.

Is my friend the only person that does a search on a potential boyfriend? Do you research people before you date them?  For those that have myspace and facebook accounts, do you feel that all of your information is easily accessible for anyone on the web to get to?