Collegiate Times

Facebook. It has worked its way into virtually every college and high school student?s vocabulary. This online social network has become so popular that it?s become a verb. Facebooking has become a routine task in many college students? lives. Whether asking someone to be a friend, looking up someone from the past or looking for entertaining groups, let?s face it ? life would not be the same without Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student, came up with the idea in winter of 2004. Chris Hughes, official spokesperson for Facebook, says it was a fairly simple concept. ?Create a universal online database for college students with social-networking functionality.? It was originally intended as a re-imagination of the typical freshman facebook, allowing students to avoid awkward-looking freshman photos and boring, vanilla descriptions. Now students can personally select any photo and information they wish to share with others.

Facebook was originally a project intended for Harvard students, ?but because over 6,000 Harvard kids signed up within the first three weeks, it seemed crazy not to open it up to a few other schools,? Hughes said. While its popularity reigns supreme among the college and high school community, Facebook profiles have made their way outside academic boundaries and to the eyes of potential employers. Recent reports have discovered employers checking up on current and prospective employees, taking a look beyond an interview and into the person?s ?other side.?

Though Facebook is only accessible to people who have a ?.edu? e-mail address, employers sometimes ask current employees or interns who are Facebook members to access the site for them. Hughes believes the main problem revolves around alumni checking up on students. ?It's important to remember that a future employer would have to be a graduate of the particular school that the interviewee is attending and that that particular school gives out .edu e-mail addresses to its alumni,? he said.

Hughes suggests that students change their privacy settings so their profiles are inaccessible to alumni. The Virginia Tech Police Department, like the law enforcement departments at many other universities, has said it will monitor websites such as Facebook and Collegehumor.com. It mainly uses the sites as resources to aid investigations, said Officer Geof Allen of Tech?s Community Outreach Unit. Allen fears students may have a misconception about what their privacy settings really are. Students see they have adjustable privacy settings, and they think they?re safe from potential stalkers.

In fact, this may not be true. Just because Facebook requires a .edu e-mail account to sign up doesn?t mean it?s safe. He himself has a .edu account, as do all Tech professors and many Tech employees.

Allen refers to Facebook as ?stalker heaven,? a perfect place to find all kinds of personal information about students. He suggests students refrain from making their cell phone numbers readily available to anyone on the web. Even things like posting your favorite music can potentially put you at risk; giving stalkers a glimpse into your personal likes and dislikes gives them subjects of interest to lure you in.

While it may seem a little extreme to be so cautious as to remove your favorite movies from your Facebook profile, it?s true. Just about anyone can view your information in someway or another, regardless of their e-mail account. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends from high school and those long lost childhood pals. What originally started as a modern twist to the traditional freshman facebook at one university has spread to every school in the nation, Hughes said. Most users spend about 18 minutes per day on the site, and out of the 12.4 million unique users of Facebook, 27,568 are registered users at Virginia Tech.