Kids posting cell phone #'s on facebook!

[LuvCuteBoys]

When I was in high school, I had a phone (no cells back then) and my number was published in the phone book for everyone to see.
I'm not sure if I've got my cell phone number on my facebook page, but I do have it on my website.
Don't know what safety issue comes up with someone having your phone number, so I don't think it's a big deal.

Ahhh phone books. Remember those?! They listed ADDRESSES, too

 

[jsmith]

with your phone number and an internet connection-in 5 minutes i can have your full name and address-in 10 ill know what you paid for your home and now much its currently worth, how long you have lived there and if you have obtained any additional building permits, school district your children attend school in and quiet possibly the name of the school, and have directions to your house. in 30 i will likely know your credit score and what your current debt picture looks like. Most of that information is easily available to anyone who has a place to start and bothers to look. If i want to work harder-if you have not been very careful with what information you put on the net, applications for different things and so on-in a hour i could have your SS #. People think identity theft occurs when someone steals a credit card number in a scanner or ATM trap-but thats not always true. If you feel comfortable putting you number out on the net-knock yourself out-me-im not gonna do that.

 

[nerdylightbulb]

I'd never post my number on Facebook o.e

 

[laurie31]

When I was in high school, I had a phone (no cells back then) and my number was published in the phone book for everyone to see.
I'm not sure if I've got my cell phone number on my facebook page, but I do have it on my website.
Don't know what safety issue comes up with someone having your phone number, so I don't think it's a big deal.

No one could text you porn back then.

Our DD did this too, and we just made her take it down. I'm actually not sure how truly unsafe it would be for a teen to post their number on Facebook but I just don't like the idea of anyone having her number besides those she has personally given it to. She isn't friends with anyone that she doesn't know in RL, though, so it's likely all her Facebook friends already knew her cell number.

 

[Mrs. Charming]

To answer OP's original question-- yes, I'd definitely call the parents. I'd want to know if my kid did that!

(Ughh.. I hate facebook! Seems to create so many problems.)

 

[PixieDust32]

I check my girl's account often and check their settings, you can make the info like e-mail, phone number visible to her only or to her friends only. All of her friends already know her number so we got the setting to be visible to her friends only,

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

with your phone number and an internet connection-in 5 minutes i can have your full name and address-in 10 ill know what you paid for your home and now much its currently worth, how long you have lived there and if you have obtained any additional building permits, school district your children attend school in and quiet possibly the name of the school, and have directions to your house. in 30 i will likely know your credit score and what your current debt picture looks like. Most of that information is easily available to anyone who has a place to start and bothers to look. If i want to work harder-if you have not been very careful with what information you put on the net, applications for different things and so on-in a hour i could have your SS #. People think identity theft occurs when someone steals a credit card number in a scanner or ATM trap-but thats not always true. If you feel comfortable putting you number out on the net-knock yourself out-me-im not gonna do that.

You're missing the point. You can't go to Facebook and find my phone number without hacking into my profile. And if you can hack into that, I'm sure you can hack into my wireless providers website and my online banking as well.

Or you can just take that check I wrote to you and steal the information off that.

I'm not disagreeing that there are ways of getting information. I'm saying that if the only people who have access to your Facebook profile are friends of yours then posting a phone number shouldn't be a big deal.

Someimtes people tend to be overly paranoid and I choose to not buy into it.

 

[Acklander]

No one could text you porn back then.

Nope, no ability to text porn back then, but porn wasn't invented with the internet. It's been around for a while.

 

[tiggerlover]

I agree! Anyone on mine or my daughters facebook would be people that already had my cell number or hers so no big deal with her posting it on there....only her friends can see it!

You do not have to be a friend to see this information, I was just looking at a person's page who was not a friend of mine and the information was available for me to see.

 

[Callie]

Most cell phone numbers involve a ton of tracking to find out who they belong too, and that person's home address. I don't have mine on there just because I don't want randoms texting me.

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

You do not have to be a friend to see this information, I was just looking at a person's page who was not a friend of mine and the information was available for me to see.

Because whoever's page it is made it available to you. You CANNOT go to my page and see this information. You can't even see my profile picture unless you're on my friends list.

 

[mykidsand_i]

I just tested out my 'am I correct, or loosing it???" question. I went to four different friends pages, then clicked on a BUNCH of their friends that I am NOT friends with. I could see almost everything...the town they live in, I could see ALL of the pictures they were in, I could see who they were married to and What they posted as a personal message. 2 of the 10 people I looked at had their cell numbers in their 'personal message'...all I had to do to get it was click twice (on my friend and on her friends). ALL of them had pictures available to me...and they are 'friends of a friend of mine"

The fact is, that SOME of us (including my DH, Myself and my parents) know that PEOPLE NEED TO CHANGE THEIR SETTINGS IF THEY DON'T want people (other than their direct friends) to see their info. MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO CLUE that they need to change that setting. If you let FB choose it for you, A LOT of your info. is open to friends of friends and even sometimes more.

A lot of parents who's kids have FB pages don't even know that their kid is on FB, or who their kids friends are on FB, or know what the security settings are on FB...The big thing for the kids safety is that a parent KNOWS these things! I think that any parent who is concerned about their kids on FB is doing the right thing when they get involved and monitors them. There is nothing wrong with protecting information. Posting it on the internet only makes it EASIER for people to access it. I know, anyone can spend an hour and find out almost everything about MY life. I know that. BUT, why should I make it easier for them? The more places I CHOOSE to put my info. online, the more CORRECT info. gets placed out there. 1/2 of the sites I've seen with my info. doesn't even have the correct info.! That's not an over statement either- it's at least 1/2!

When people are on fb or twitter ALL the time, leaving updates- a lot more people have access to: when you are and are not home, when a child is home alone, when a family is going on vacation (their home will be empty from this day to that day), when a spouse is traveling and the wife is home alone, what problems a family is having, what makes a certain person happy/angry/excited...and a lot more. Leaving your own trail makes the info. more personal, more intamate...

There was a local family (a town about an hour away from me- and it was in the news ALL OVER here last summer) that went on vacation. The wife had a FB account and talked about this big trip they'd be taking...got into details about WHERE they were going, where they were staying, what dates they were leaving...all messages were posted on her wall.

A friend of a friends friend (3 times removed) of hers lived about 3 hours away from this family...went to their home, BROKE in, stayed in the home the entire time they were gone and like 2 days before they got home, then left...the only reason why they knew was because there were some groceries left in the fridge that they didn't buy...and the guy dropped a phone number of his friend in their town...along with a name in their bedroom...So, this is why I CHOOSE not to put everything on face book...It happens. Turns out this person wasn't a trouble maker at all before this happened. He said he 'saw an opportunity' he had seen pictures of the famiy on FB, saw how nice their home looked and he 'wanted to experiance their good life'...

I'm sure this has happened to more people than just this one family- and I KNOW there are news stories about it.

I know people can access my info...I know they can get all the info. they want. MOST people don't attempt to go looking for it, but if it's handed to them with LITTLE TO NO EFFORT at all, more people get thoughts in their heads about things they could do.

 

[PixieDust32]

I just tested out my 'am I correct, or loosing it???" question. I went to four different friends pages, then clicked on a BUNCH of their friends that I am NOT friends with. I could see almost everything...the town they live in, I could see ALL of the pictures they were in, I could see who they were married to and What they posted as a personal message. 2 of the 10 people I looked at had their cell numbers in their 'personal message'...all I had to do to get it was click twice (on my friend and on her friends). ALL of them had pictures available to me...and they are 'friends of a friend of mine"

The fact is, that SOME of us (including my DH, Myself and my parents) know that PEOPLE NEED TO CHANGE THEIR SETTINGS IF THEY DON'T want people (other than their direct friends) to see their info. MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO CLUE that they need to change that setting. If you let FB choose it for you, A LOT of your info. is open to friends of friends and even sometimes more.

A lot of parents who's kids have FB pages don't even know that their kid is on FB, or who their kids friends are on FB, or know what the security settings are on FB...The big thing for the kids safety is that a parent KNOWS these things! I think that any parent who is concerned about their kids on FB is doing the right thing when they get involved and monitors them. There is nothing wrong with protecting information. Posting it on the internet only makes it EASIER for people to access it. I know, anyone can spend an hour and find out almost everything about MY life. I know that. BUT, why should I make it easier for them? The more places I CHOOSE to put my info. online, the more CORRECT info. gets placed out there. 1/2 of the sites I've seen with my info. doesn't even have the correct info.! That's not an over statement either- it's at least 1/2!

When people are on fb or twitter ALL the time, leaving updates- a lot more people have access to: when you are and are not home, when a child is home alone, when a family is going on vacation (their home will be empty from this day to that day), when a spouse is traveling and the wife is home alone, what problems a family is having, what makes a certain person happy/angry/excited...and a lot more. Leaving your own trail makes the info. more personal, more intamate...

There was a local family (a town about an hour away from me- and it was in the news ALL OVER here last summer) that went on vacation. The wife had a FB account and talked about this big trip they'd be taking...got into details about WHERE they were going, where they were staying, what dates they were leaving...all messages were posted on her wall.

A friend of a friends friend (3 times removed) of hers lived about 3 hours away from this family...went to their home, BROKE in, stayed in the home the entire time they were gone and like 2 days before they got home, then left...the only reason why they knew was because there were some groceries left in the fridge that they didn't buy...and the guy dropped a phone number of his friend in their town...along with a name in their bedroom...So, this is why I CHOOSE not to put everything on face book...It happens. Turns out this person wasn't a trouble maker at all before this happened. He said he 'saw an opportunity' he had seen pictures of the famiy on FB, saw how nice their home looked and he 'wanted to experiance their good life'...

I'm sure this has happened to more people than just this one family- and I KNOW there are news stories about it.

I know people can access my info...I know they can get all the info. they want. MOST people don't attempt to go looking for it, but if it's handed to them with LITTLE TO NO EFFORT at all, more people get thoughts in their heads about things they could do.

Its because of the settings, I have my girls account private, their friends cannot share nothing of them, I even blocked the search engine app, that way if someone search on google for their names it won't come up.

 

[LuvCuteBoys]

Again, if all of that information is available on a child's Facebook page the problem isn't that they posted their phone number for their friends. The problem is that their settings aren't correct.

My original answer was that if they only have close friends who can see their information then I don't see what the problem is. I stand by that.

 

[sunnyday123]

When I was in high school, I had a phone (no cells back then) and my number was published in the phone book for everyone to see.
I'm not sure if I've got my cell phone number on my facebook page, but I do have it on my website.
Don't know what safety issue comes up with someone having your phone number, so I don't think it's a big deal.

It's a big deal when it's a childs phone number. Whether or not only their "friends can see it" doesn't matter in my book either. I wouldn't take the chance, my DD's safety isn't worth it.

 

[kafitty]

i realize that this is a much different issue for kids v. adults, but i've had my mobile phone number on my facebook page since its inception (2004) and i've NEVER had a problem with it.

i do believe that people should be careful about what they post on the internet, but at the same time, i think people get worked into a tizzy about things that really aren't that significant.