How safe is Facebook?

[Jacqui Harvey]

I joined Facebook to sign the petition to save the Dolphins.  I don't use it a lot and have all the usual precautions that I keep it quite private.   I had quite a long email from a man in America this morning that went into details about himself and how he wanted to speak more to me, and asking me to get in touch with him though Yahoo.  He is not on my friends list.   I went to Facebook and his message was on there too.  I have now blocked him but wonder how he got in touch with me when he is not a friend[?].  
I find this quite creepy, and wonder does it happen to other people as well[?]

[Toky]

Even if your settings are set at the highest privacy setting, he might have liked your profile picture if he'd seen your home page or something you posted on someone else's page. Maybe it was through the dolfin petition site even. He wouldn't see any of your info, but if my memory serves me well, there is a tab which says soemthing like "send Jacqui/whoever a message?"
I've just closed my account with Facebook, because frankly I was spending way too much time on it. When you think about it too, it's a form of voyeurism.

[Supacabby]

I read your post on getting mail from someone you once did business with, can only imagine how much this SPAM fb mail annoyed you

I'm a regular facebook user so hope to help. You have your settings open so that "anyone" can message you, this is changed as follows:

Log in, go to "Account" on top right of the page then you will see:

Connecting on Facebook
Control basic information your friends will use to find you on Facebook View settings The blue text is a link, click on the link & adjust accordingly then save & exit.

Also are you using a secure connection? Look at your URL address; if you see http: instead of https: then you don't have a secure session and you can be hacked.

Go to Account|Account Settings|Account Security and click Change.
Check the first setting, otherwise FB defaults to the non-secure setting.

NB: You are normally unable to use fb chat & most apps under a secure setting, the apps are where most of the virus problems stem from & I always advise people to leave them well alone however I know there are many who play games daily with no difficulty, caution advised at all times.

Hope that helps & makes sense!

Mark.

[stoop]

I only see https when I'm on my banking sites or paypal etc etc. I don't see it at the top of this site for example or facebook. Doesn't the site itself have to have a certificate in order to have https?

Not quite sure how it works so any info would be appreciated. I'm sure lots of us would like to be safer on the web.

[stoop]

I've seen and understand how to change the settings to https on facebook. Done it quite easily.

Thanks

[Jacqui Harvey]

Thanks Mark, will give it a go.

[Supacabby]

Stoop: I don't want to hijack the original topic but here's a quick idea of the difference, info taken from Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure

Difference from HTTPAs opposed to HTTP URLs that begin with "http://" and use port 80 by default, HTTPS URLs begin with "https://" and use port 443 by default.

HTTP is unsecured and is subject to man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks, which can let attackers gain access to website accounts and sensitive information.

HTTPS is designed to withstand such attacks and is considered secure against such attacks (with the exception of older deprecated versions of SSL).

[stoop]

So the question is - how do I get forums such as this one to show up as https?

Just as a side fact - my hotmail account logs in as https but once in shows http. Is this a problem?