Facebook

I'm rather losing faith in Facebook. It strikes me as rather a nice idea and I have, in all fairness, heard from many people who I lost contact with years ago. However, it seems to be ruined by the large amount of spam, rubbish and scams that intrude on to the personal trivia that the system is used for.

The latest "thing I don't trust" is a password reset email that I received. I didn't request this but, whilst I can't see any obvious phishing attempt, I certainly don't want to click on the link to find out. I receive other emails from Facebook - should I trust these as well? This is the tip of the iceberg. I have fairly high security settings on my PC and the one thing that comes up as a potential threat time and again is related to Facebook

Then there is the content. I'm interested in what people are getting up to in their lives but I really can't be bothered as to what they are doing in Farmville or Mafia Wars. My wife has a selection of on-line aquaria which she constantly tends too. We also have a real aquarium but the fish could be lying tits-up in an algae infested lagoon before she took more interest in them than the virtual versions.

Finally, there is the advertising. If there is one thing that is going to put me off a product it's an advert on Facebook. Maybe, they are aiming at the hip, bright young things but most of the adverts look about as reliable as the on-line pharmacy, Russian bride and Willie extension emails which infest my in-box and end up hitting the trash-can icon before I've read past the subject line.

I'll stick with Facebook as far as it goes but I don't trust the thing any further than I could spit at it.