Most people have social media "friends" who they've either never met or don't know well enough but are quite comfortable sharing their details with everyone. Some naive people apparently informed their "friends" that they'd be spending the holidays at some exotic place and when they left, burglars broke into their home and stole whatever they could lug away. Social media friends? Well, you ought to know which of them are really your friends and if you aren't sure which ones you can trust, share not information you'd not share with a stranger on the street.
I don't have an account with any social media site and I am very cautious on where I put my full name. I'm very paranoid about that. I do not trust social media at all and it baffles my mind as to why so many people are obsessed with increasing their friends list. It's pretty crazy and just opens up all sorts of dangers, exactly like you described. I've not been using the internet that long in comparison but I remember about 10 years ago it was a very big no-no to not publish online your full name or anything that could lead back to you somehow. Fast forward to today and it's now seen as socially acceptable to do just that to the point where you can arouse suspicion if you DON'T have a social media account with your full name displayed.
Wow. Crazy story. My social media friends are in the entertainment industry and feel the need to share every little detail of all the "cool" things they're doing. They're also grossly uninformed on a variety of issues yet aren't afraid to speak their piece. All in all, scrolling down my Facebook page is an exercise in frustration.
I don't trust anyone in general so this topic is good for me. I have a lot of friends in facebook and instagram though which is surprising but I separate my facebook friends from my real friends by putting them in a certain list and putting on private certain pictures of mine. On instagram I always have my profile on private and I never add anyone I don't know on Snapchat. I'm so wary of identity theft that I also don't put my real name or city.
I am very cautious about what I post on social media because I don't trust all the friends that I have on my friends list. You never know who you can fully trust. Sometimes it is the ones that you think you can trust the most who prove differently. Some people post everything on social media and think nothing of it.
Nothing new here with dissemination of social information via Facebook-like sites now and back to the message forums on the telephone bulletin boards that came to be in the early 1980s. Only the medium has changed. The examples of disclosing travel plans to the world is found in newspaper social columns going back at least a century. The New York Times, to my thinking, is the exemplary example of such worldly news, but virtually every significant newspaper included such information. Look at Ancestry as one source of past history: marriage announcements that included honeymoon plans, funeral times foretelling days and times when houses were vacant, et cetera. People using citizens band radios (dating back to its inception circa 1958) do the same silly disclosure thing, as do some amateur radio licensees. The current regurgitation of personal information on the current medium is simply an evolution of stupidity.
I think the thing that makes it a lot more alarming in this day and age is that the information is almost in real time as opposed to daily or weekly newspapers if that makes sense? Did anyone read about that guy who tracked down and attacked that woman at her workplace all because she left a bad review of her book? Pretty relevant and pretty crazy. And also something that comes to mind, when I did have a facebook several years back one of my friends on there published her address to the world as an invite to her birthday party. Thankfully things did not escalate beyond that but you don't have to look for long to find a story similar where hundreds of people turned up to a party.
I don't share much on social media except the odd quiz or quote. I private message people instead and I have barred people from posting on my wall. I do trust some people, but not the internet with personal information or photos.
These brake ins happen constantly. Often to those people who think it's a great idea to keep their profile public. I trust SOME of the people in my social media websites but honestly, most of them are people who I know but not people who I consider close friends.
The thing is I've found my best friends on Facebook. We do share the same interests and they are like family to me nowadays. However, in the beginning, they didn't know who I was. Anyway, this doesn't mean I trust my Facebook friends, especially as most of my accounts are made only to promote certain articles on my sites. Only on my main account (it doesn't have my own name, though) I trust a couple of friends, but that's pretty much it. Other than that, Facebook is just a tool that can be used for following certain people and for promoting stuff, at least in my opinion. But I would never post personal details about my life over there.
