Social Networking - or Social NOTworking

Last five years or so we have seen a huge insurgence of Social networking sites (orkut, face book, HI5 etc), blogging (Google, yahoo 360 etc), micro blogging (tweeter, google buzz) and so on. Most of the users of these sites are youngsters. But also there are people like me, who have created an account in some social networking site, because everyone else is doing it. There are certain benefits though...For example, if someone uploads some information / photos about him/her, I get to know about it without neither of us making a special effort to keep in touch (the only effort involves logging into the website I guess).

But we need to ask a question to ourselves...Am I really interested to know about that? If I am really interested in a person, shouldn't I drop him an E-mail or make a call? I feel that instead of bringing people together, actually it is pushing us away and we are becoming more and more DISCONNECTED.

Apart from a social evil, there is a huge danger to in terms of Identity Theft, and information misuse. A lot of us do not understand how to use these facilities responsibly. People are exchanging cell phone numbers, photos, mail ids and even bank account numbers etc over publicly visible mediums.

But there are people who are sitting there and silently observing all this to take unfair advantage.

A hacker with a little more effort can probably find out your family details, their and your birth dates, your address, what is your favorite movie, your pets name and so on. Well so far this seems ok...

But there are software once fed with all this information can start creating passwords, which a hacker can try to gain access to your email accounts or some bank accounts. Think about it !! Doesn't your password made from these above information? If not, then you are a smart and I guess also smart enough not to share sensitive information over insecure mediums. But most of us are NOT.

Once he has access, he can use it whichever way he wants. !!

I am not strictly against these social networking websites. But I guess there has to be very strict guideline and some intelligence imposed by the websites to protect gullible users, who fall prey to it.