Facebook will send a request to your friends, from your address book, but ONLY if you allow it to. The friend finder asks for your email address and password. If you do not give your password to facebook, it does not access your address book. The choice is totally up to you.

unfortunately many people are very novice at that kind of stuff and do not fully understand what it means and what it will do and do end up giving full access to their address book. I have a good friend that just made the mistake of joining facebook even after I warned her of the dangers and infections running rampant there and warned her of the address book issue and lo and behold with in days I was getting hammered with her facebook info and invites as were all her other address book entries plus in one weeks time it had infected her pc so badly it required a full format and re install. Now she understands LOL

Thank you both.

Sue

This is timely for me.

I was asked by a relative to join FB because it is a good way to share pictures and family news. I joined, but in trying to add other family members from my address book something went awry.

There were two options to invite people to join using your address book. One option involved giving your password. I did not do that. I just clicked on names that I chose, and suddenly it appeared everyone in my Address book was being sent to. There was a box to type a message, but I hadn't even typed anything in that box. Yesterday On FB I found by looking around there is a list of those who got the (automated) invitation, but it is not all of my Address book, which I thought it was. I must have hit submit unintentionally or something, so it could have been my fault. So it was a fluke of some kind. Giving out your password is dangerous and I would never do that.

So far I've found several relatives and that is all I'm interested in doing.

I guess FB is like anything else on the Internet. There are Pros and Cons. I have all my security helps in place and keep them updated.

RC, sorry about your friend's problems on FB.

(Hi, Sue)

Sue

I would like to do some reading on Facebook (local/national radio and TV people have sites) but you have to join to access them.

Since I also have lots of security in place, could I join using my throw-away Yahoo email with nobody in the addy book without getting into too much trouble? Don't plan to post anything.

here is the main problem with how the infections are happening in facebook, there are bad or sloppy codes in the facebook application which allows hackers to get into the application and replace code for things that would look like something innocent with something not so innocent. for example you might see that there is a link you think is going to lead you to say someones pictures and you think ok no problem and click on the link well below the surface that click you just did really was not to send you to someones pictures it was instead to send you to a bad site that by visiting alone, some people could get infected or have the pop ups start to hit you that you can not x out of with out installing something on your pc. And there are lots of little applications for facebook and myspace these are written by anyone and you have no idea what they actually wrote into that code. Facebook and myspace really don't care all they want is people they are not real worried about protecting anyone. Which is exactly why they made it so easy to accidentally send out your entire address book, good way to get more people. And why do they want people and addresses? gee hum could it be to harvest information and sell it?

So even doing things you think surely will not harm you can, that is what happened to my friend, someone she thought she knew sent her a link, she clicked on it, it was not really a link to someones pictures at all and she got badly infected.
This is like the clickjacking we had talked about at one time. there are various methods being used on those social networking sites. In fact if you google facebook virus you will get lots of info as well as directions on exactly how to create them! Lovely.

Just be really careful on any of those kinds of sites. Unfortunately a lot of the things that are the infections on those sites are not necessarily ones that your AV will catch. Lots and lots of people have got that dreaded antivirusxp 2009 infection from there and that even has a rootkit in it in some of its forms.

Just one of many
Facebook Virus Turns Your Computer into a Zombie

I will tell you that I personally do NOT do any social networking sites period, I just say NO. To each their own. Everyone needs to just be very aware and then make their own decision.

Thanks for that info, Ravencajun. It sounds like even clicking around on there without posting is something I can well do without. I do remember the clickjacking thread. Sandy

See link for facebook safety

Here is a link that might be useful: facebook.com/safety/