I opened, & maintain, a Fbook account to keep tracks on offspring. At one point I got sucked into the ethos & "over shared". Otherwise I agree with your opinion on it.

Re BE: yeah, but so far, interaction is positive for me. And I have no interest in or reason to "stalk(ing)" other members. The day I do, is the day I'll need to leave.

Just had to check that out - ha some Professors are quite unpopular!

My Brother-in-law, who is single, has around 7 million FB friends - 99% of them being pretty ladies. My OH has about 20 - most of them grumpy married men lol

BE is the only forum I am involved with...it's the only forum I have ever been involved with. I don't do FB...I opened an account years ago to look at something that was posted on BE.

I have met several people at the Scotland Yard Meet Ups and a few more from the US forums. The people from the US forums I have met have been BE members longer than I. Hubby almost always comes along too.

Indeed. DD and friends have a good mooch on rate my prof before they choose their courses!

Was that one dharley?

the only reason I joined was cos I kept missing out on toddler playdates for the kid

On the account you know about ...

Maybe I need to stalk him..lol

Haha- good point.

Yes. But then there are, apparently, *stealth*, ahem, apps, which might be hypothetically useful if one has reason to be concerned & wishes to keep tracks ... IYSWIM...

Maybe I will just not allow my kids iPads/Pods or computers or phones. Problem solved!

So I was discussing this thread with a friend tonight. She was a member of a HR forum and she stopped posting on it once it came out that one of the members - who she was friendly with - had been contacting employers and providing links to threads which didn't show the staff member in such a great light.

I don't know why someone would even do this though - it just seems spiteful for spites sake? Like what do they get out of doing that? She said that whilst it didn't happen to her, it opened her eyes to letting her guard down whilst online.

It was that statement that made me think - I guess if you picked one of us forum members (one who was not blatantly open about the real them) and you read through the majority of their posts - would it be easy to work out who they were, just from the random personal bits and bobs that slip out as we chat?

An interesting topic.
I'm not overly concerned about people knowing who I am, or working it out from my avatar (used on a few forums) or my username, again used on a couple of forums (one of which does mention who I work for)

I'm stalking the whole lot of you, especially the locals, so be warned (I am of course jesting, I'm not *that* creepy )

It does also depend on why the stalking is occurring. For example, perhaps, as has happened on one forum I'm on, a troll kept popping up and being most unpleasant to others. Various methods used to try and lock them out, but they were seen to be very resourceful. A few of the more technically minded types decided to do some digging and apparently gave the person a little bit of a talking to in the real world, after finding out who they were. This seemed to stop things, and perhaps make the person pause for though.

If you really wanted to get the goods on someone, doxing I believe it is known as in the current parlance, then I'm sure a post on reddit or 4chan could get people digging up everything up to, including, and far beyond your desired targets inside leg measurement.

I think things are made even easier with the very lax way people treat social media these days. I'd say it's just teens, but alas not. I've got a few people on my friends list that seem to have FB wired into their brain, that or they really do just post pretty much everything that happens to them, as and when it happens. These aren't kids, a couple of them are older than I am, and it's not a lack of grasping tech and thinking no-one else can see stuff. I don't think it's vanity either. But it is very odd.

I think that some of it may well just be escapism, as the internet does give you that.

I very rarely post on Facebook, let alone Twitter. Typically I'll only say something if it's of importance (I'm talking about my actual status posts, I will comment on others posts fairly frequently). I think one of the last status updates I did was to have a bit of a rant about that ice bucket challenge thing.

I do think kids need to be taught not to be so open when posting stuff, as it can attract all kinds of weirdo's, plus you then get cyberbullying, and I think as we all know, kids can be, and are, extremely cruel.

Yes, that was his user name. He's quite unusual in that his internet persona is much more conservative, more mainstream, than he is in real life. I suppose it's difficult to project a willingness to be seen in red trousers through cyberspace.