Web Design Forum: Social Networking - Web Design Forum

The web is an incredibly useful tool for tracking people down, be they old friends or potential business partners. Social networking websites seem to be the main place where this occurs . Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace let you search for people by name, filtering results by age, location and interests.
Do you think that people can gain personal information to easily? Even if most of the people looking for information genuinely pose no threat, what about the one or two web crawlers that are looking for your information for the wrong reason. Some good examples of this are below:
I was watching a program on the BBC not so long ago and they were talking about Employers searching social networking sites for information about the person who is applying for the job. And This may not be a problem if on your profile you have some nice pictures of you and your friends. But when you have images of you drunk or doing stupid thing, well I doubt that they will contact you back. But if you put this information out for all to see isn't it ultimately your fault? Or should these website install safety systems of some description that monitor who is looking at our sites? Whatever your answers are to these question social networks are just one step further into the Big Brother society described by George Orwell in his book 1984.
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