Beware of facebook  

Unfortunately it's too easy for hackers to steal information from us. Pictures are especially easy to steal and use in terrible ways. Your friend would be foolish to give into the blackmail attempts, as there is no way to know that they wouldn't do something anyway. She should act like it doesn't matter, because the hackers objective is to make money. If they can't they are less apt to follow thru with their threats.

This is news to me. Reading this post send shivers down my spine as I have lots of pictures in my facebook posted by my siblings. All social sites are target of these hackers and it is quite dangerous to put our real pictures in these social sites as we may never know what these hackers do to our pictures.

I think that people are quite foolish to think that things they post on a site on the internet are safe and secure. It is a bit different when dealing with a respected financial institution say for online banking or PayPal, but on a social networking anything can happen.

This is why I am appalled to see parents posting photos of their children onine or allowing their children to post personal information.

I have an account there but rarely put a photos as i am not feel nervous as I am not a celebrity or well endowed there are lot who also put their pictures and yet they are not affected. as the hacker research to would be their victim is and maybe your friend is rich that she becomes the target. As hacker are so wise they conduct research before getting their victim so it is good to remain simple the safer.

The sad thing about it is, there are lots of site telling steps on how to hack a facebook account. I think, it will always be a problem for most social sites such as FB. There always be phishing and hacking of accounts. I just hope that they can have a tool or system that can block this kind of activities.

Hi Vingyan,

It is quite common to hack the site by the hackers and steal the information
about particular user along with their photo, that was the main reasons we
should add our original photo at any site. As you have been known that most
of the hackers would spoiled the system and would gets everything from the
accounts , so it is very easy for them to gets or make the easy money through
this information and photo of the new user in that particular sites.

So better to avoid the habits of adding the photo with any site because
there are peoples those who are always misused everything for their benefits.

Have a nice day.

It's a good thing I don't have many pictures on my Facebook account, then. I always, always, always use non-identifiable pictures and I put the least amount of information about myself on there. It's common sense not to put stuff like your complete address and phone number on any sites, but a lot of people don't seem to have much of that these days.

i do worry about hackers, but i also worry about children being preyed upon when they are surfing the net. I am always very reluctant to give personal details to any kind of site. i am a member of facebook and they have updated their security recently. so you can block unwanted content. For an example on the same day, we were warned on the news about giving out personal details (e.g. address, phone number date of birth etc,)because of hacking into your bank accounts and having your identity stolen. I went on line to get some quotes for my car insurance. I went on a very well known insurance comparison site that is advertising all the time in GB and blow me, if they didnt ask for those very details. i logged off straight away and went on the phone instead!

I always advised my friends not to be too serious about social network sites like Facebook and its wannabes.Everything on the net is hackable. So it comes as no surprise when this particular perosn lost her photographs to hackers. Modification of photographs which amounts to defacing and negative stories are also to be expected. So let us learn our lessons. Avoid putting hand phone numbers, addresses and personal particulars on social-working sites. You never know one day a con man or a would be rapist would come a calling!

Yea, there are always risks to using sites like facebook or myspace, especially with your details set and your photo albums etc...
I would never agree to the blackmail- i mean the hacker could just fool you and once he gets what he wants, do whatever he was going to do initially or ask for more.
I think the best opt- would be to try and contact facebook, or just start a new account and ignore the previous one.