This article pretty much summarizes how I feel about all social networking websites such as Facebook and Myspace - they're just huge dumps for saving all sorts of personal information you shouldn't be giving out. No matter what you use social networking websites for (ie: catching up with old friends, sending messages, etc.), it's possible to do these things without giving out excessive information, but people are often drawn to doing these things.
The idea of Facebook as a US government project makes a good conspiracy theory, but you don't need a tinfoil hat to realise that its 30-plus million users are storing huge amounts of personal data such as their address and interests on the service.If you use it to its full potential, you can share details not just of your interests, but your employment, educational history, sexual orientation, friends and family and even day-to-day activities. If you don't change the default privacy settings, you could be sharing that information not just with people you know but with entire cities or even countries that have made their own groups.
