Lance, I adore FB also! I've been blessed to find nieces and nephews this past month that I thought were lost to our family forever because of divorce....long story. But we've reconnected and I'm so thankful that they are in my life again. It's a great way to keep in touch with family and friends at the touch of a keyboard.
-terry

Dear Lance,
While I haven't gotten into face book I know why you love it and am thrilled for you. I have thought about looking into it since you told me about it, I'm missing a beloved cousin and thought i might find them there.
Rosy Smiles,
Carlota

I've been invited by a few people to join FB but I've been dragging my feet---It kind of scares me-----

Florence

Florence, you should check it out. Paul Barden took his shirt off for a picture of his abs. The ladies were all swooning. The only thing you have to fear is not having enough points to throw back a higher rated water balloon or pillow than what Carla throws at you.

One woman that I friended when I first got on facebook because I remembered her from my 25th hs reunion turned out to be visiting with a classmate and was not from our school. Since I never went to school with Carla or Melva either I figured what the heck lets see what develops. Maryellen posts some great pictures of the state from her travels and she got me back into baking with her talking about making jams and jellies.

Being friends with Carla or Melva means you are never bored. If they are not asking questions they are throwing something or posting thoughts for the day. Bet, aka Buford is a funny woman in her own right and I am glad to be developing a friendship with her as well. Being on FB gets you out of any ruts caused by being in a place where your interests are the focal point such as a rose forum. This is a great place to start a friendship since you know right off that the other person has at least one interest in common or they would not be here.

FB is great at finding out the other areas that you share common interests.

Lance---you make it sound interesting-----maybe I will try it----

sounds like fun.

Florence

Those on facebook please be careful.
Your info: on expo

As the popularity of Facebook transcends MySpace, issues of personal information security have arisen, transforming fun applications into risky ventures.

"ThereÂs a different type of prob­lem with Facebook that people are not as aware of  and that concerns the way the personal information they confide flows to the application developers," said Marc Rotenberg, president for Electronic Privacy Information Center, which researches to raise awareness for privacy and civil liberties issues.

Before an application can be downloaded, every user is required to allow the application  and any of its creators  to have access to his or her profile information and their Facebook friends informa­tion.

Turning privacy into piracy, any­one they agree to network with now has the ability to distribute person­al information to third parties.

Then again, there is FacebookÂs number one principle: "People should have the freedom to share whatever information they want as long as they both con­sent to the connection," accord­ing to its Web site.

Just because a user chooses to reveal their information through the use of an application, should that justify the applicationÂs ac­cess to the userÂs friends personal information?

"Allowing application access will let it pull your profile infor­mation, photos, your friends info and other content that it requires to work," according to the dis­claimer before an application on Facebook is downloaded.

Adding applications gives the creator access to a userÂs entire profile, but users may not see what this information is being utilized for.

"Those programs get a lot more information than they need to re­ally do what they say theyÂre doing, and that has to do with the struc­ture of the program development in the Facebook environment, which I think needs to be looked at more closely," said Rotenberg.

There has even been a group formed on Facebook by Kate Bauer in New York named "No, I will NOT invite 20 friends just to add your application!"

The group page went on to explain under its description, "SAY NO to forced invites, spam, violations of privacy and other misleading marketing practices! VOTE WITH YOUR MOUSE!" The group had 77,862 members at press time.

When an application requires a user to invite a minimum number of friends in order to use the ap­plication, "itÂs spam in the sense that itÂs enforced virality," said Michael Calore, the Webmonkey editor for Wired. "They want their application to go viral so they force people to send it around like a virus. Even though itÂs not really like spam, itÂs unsolicited, which is still Âspammy. Another serious problem Rotenberg sees with Facebook is "people are using the Facebook platform to send spam, to hack ac­counts, to try and commit fraud," through viruses such as Koobface. Worse than a late-night bron­chitis cough, Koobface is an infec­tual cyber virus which was linger­ing around MySpace about a year ago. It causes infected computers to send fake URL links via these social networking Web sites. Once a user clicks the link, Koobface sends messages to the infected accounts friends, which display fake advertisements containing the link to further the Koobface virus. Now it is spreading like an illness around Facebook, affecting computers whose users click on specific links embedded in spam. Facebook has been active­ly working to end the virus. Similarly, attempting to take an IQ quiz on MySpace can be just as re­vealing as allowing any Facebook application.

For example, when you type in "Free IQ Test" for all of MySpace" into the the search bar, one of the sponsored links is www.FunEducation.com.

Upon entering this site and filling out the quiz, each page holds the misleading title "Free IQ Test," until the truth of the

matter reveals itself after the user has already answered all of the questions. The quiz-taker must either "sign in"  after providing the Web site with personal infor­mation  or the user must provide an e-mail, password, name, age, gender and ZIP code in order to dis­cover the Web siteÂs opinion of the userÂs "IQ." Instead of paying with dollars, the user is forced to pay with their personal information, or not receive the siteÂs calculated IQ score. Rotenburg also anticipates credit card fraud to become a big­ger problem on Facebook as more users purchase items online from sites advertising on Facebook.

"When you install a new applica­tion, that application is only allowed to share the info in the userÂs profile depending on how theyÂve chosen to share that info on Facebook," Calore said.

In the end, it is ultimately the userÂs responsibility to safeguard their personal information. No third parties can misuse informa­tion that has not been voluntarily given by a user at any given time.

The next time a Facebook user is tempted to find out what their ghet­to name is, or what decade of rock they are, they might ask themselves if the results are worth the risk.

Roselvr, thanks for the wake up. I try to stay as far from most of these things as possible. The IQ test is everywhere, it can pop up on most every other application when you click on any of them.

Of course now I will never find out what my ghetto name is. How about Pot Ghetto, I already have one.

I don't know Lance, I have problems with it. I get confused by all the request things and lose my patience. It sounds like you're doing it the right way. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

There are now at least 2 toads....

Mendocino, ignore the unwanted requests. Or click ignore from the person who is sending them. I answer the ones I want and skip the rest. My own roses picture album is growing as fast as the roses who's pictures are being taken. It is currently at 115 pictures.

Melva, I guess toads just love your pots.

Lance

I love facebook and wish I had more gardening or rose friends on there. So far most my friends are friends or family (or friends of those) but nobody gardens that much. Anyone wants to add me as a friend, email me!

What I've found with Facebook is to make sure your settings are right. In photo albums, if it's family, you might want to set it so that only friends see them, verses friends of friends (allows people not on your friends list to see) I'm pretty sure most settings are like that.

If any FB app requires that I agree to allow it to access my profile info, I decline it. That means I have said no all FB apps, and I'm fine with that. The apps don't offer anything of interest to me anyway. Make it what you want, with security always in mind.

Paul

Lance I should go look at your photo albumn.

It sounds like I'm not making the most of my Facebook experience. I joined last year when I was working on my 30-year HS reunion. It made communication among the attendees and committee members a breeze! We all shared photos and stories, which broke the ice and made the reunion itself so much better.

I'm with Paul ... I have no apps. I'm always getting a beer sent my way (I went to HS in Germany), or a hug, or a stick in the eye ... I just can't hug anyone back. A few of the rose people here are on my friends list ... I should find some more.

Connie

I too need to learn how to do this Facebook thingy. I don't even have a picture up of me!
Lance, I was so excited when you sent me the friend request. I hollered so loud that David came running to see what had happened. I laughed and told him Lance had asked to be my friend on Facebook. He thought I had lost my mind getting so excited over Facebook. hahahahahaha

I just wanted you to know I haven't been ignoring you without doing all this Facebook stuff. I just don't know how!

Deb :o))

Happy Birthday Lance!

Facebook is a great social networking tool. I connected with acquaintances, family and friends with whom I had little to no communication for a decade or more. I befriended several members on the Gardenweb Rose forums (after meeting them in person at the Heritage Roses Northwest event). MySpace is so yesterday! LOL!

Facebook's default profile setting does not incorporate in-depth safety features to ward off pesky apps, spying on your footprints, insipid requests, etc.. You can get rid of these unwanted irritants by blocking and disabling various Facebook features without compromising on your user experience with networking. You can modify Facebook's default settings on your profile using the Settings option which is located on the right hand on the navigation bar at the top of the page (see the image below):

{{gwi:205974}}

Here's a useful article,10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know which provides a wealth of information on protecting the privacy of your account on Facebook. It takes a bit of time to set iron-clad (or so we hope) safety features on Facebook that best suit your needs. It is worth the investment for your peace of mind. Do make sure to go back to your Settings options every few months to see if any additional safety features have been added.

Hmm...this became a longer post than I intended. Ah well...I call it an "occupational disease"...my technical writing background. :)

Do we have a Facebook group for Gardenweb Roses folks?

One thing to do after you have been on FB for a while is to recheck your classmates to see if any new friends show up. I have reconnected with my favorite friends from school including the woman who I first met in English class back in the fall of 1974. Our teacher had the students placed alphabetically starting at the left front and going down one isle and up the next. Peggy sat directly behind me and we used to talk all of the time when we were done with our school work. We are already planning on exchanging recipes for cookies.

I knew she lived in So Cal but not exactly where. Now I know she lives only about 45 miles from Carlota. When I get down there I can see several friends on one trip.

Lance