Facebook. Friend or foe?

Facebook warnings, man. I'm so over them.

How many times have you see this on your Facebook page?

WARNNG!! DO NOT ACCEPT FRIEND REQUEST FROM THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE,THEY ARE
SATANISTS/PEDOPHILES/HACKER/INSERT LABEL OF CHOICE blah blah blah.

or this:

I cannot believe that you can see who is viewing your profile. ! I just saw my top 10 profile stalkers and I am SHOCKED that my Ex is still viewing my profile :O ! You can also see WHO VIEWED YOUR PROFILE here [Link Removed]! Its Super Cool

or this:

request to all FB friends - I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. However, with the recent changes in FB, the public can now see activities in any wall. This happens when our friend hits "like" or "comment", automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this sett
ing by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way. So I need your help. Only
you can do this for me.

PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (do not click), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS" (also without clicking), then down to "Settings", click here and a list will appear.

REMOVE the CHECK on "COMMENTS & LIKE" by clicking on it. By doing this, my activity amongst my friends and my family will no longer become public. Paste this on your wall so your contacts would follow suit too, that is, if you care about your privacy.

***

I see these and other warnings at least weekly. Many of my friends and rellies don't really know how Facebook works (do any of us?), and they mean well by sharing such messages.
I've re-posted stuff like that in the past, too -- now I've become very cynical and check everything through snopes.com or Facecrooks
and I do it for several reasons -- firstly, some of these warnings are in fact dangerous.
You can pick up viruses or worms from clicking on these things, and suddenly your computer is affected.

Secondly, a lot of these hoaxes come with so-called 'fixes' attached. But the problem is that the fixes often don't work.
That last message I posted above? about 'hover your mouse over my name etc etc'? that doesn't make your wall private.

If you want to make your information private, you need to go into your privacy settings and manually set everything yourself. Try using a good guide, and make sure that you have everything locked down as securely as you can.
And encourage your friends to do the same.

Having said all that, you should know that sometimes the warnings are real. Yesterday, I saw a post from someone I trust to give me good information (let's call her J), warning that old private messages can be seen on your public Timeline.
I checked a number of sources, all of whom insisted that those were in fact not private messages, but that people had gotten confused between private messages and old wall posts.
I checked my Timeline. Nothing untoward showed up.
But I trust J to know the difference, so I've been checking sources, and some are now saying that they're pushing the matter further because they don't accept the Facebook explanation.
So the lesson is, BE CAREFUL! and when you think you've done everything you can, be EVEN MORE CAREFUL!

Remember that everything you post on Facebook is ON THE INTERNET. It is potentially open to theft or hacking or privacy violations, because it's the INTERNET. There are a lot of bad people out there, and they have the same access to Facebook that you do.