Why I deleted my Facebook

Ok so I have many friends and family keep asking me why I deleted my facebook 8 months ago.  I have a couple reasons so here are a few of them:

1.  Privacy - Applications and other users can take advantage of you if you are not cautious enough.  One day I noticed the ads on my facebook page were things I would be interested in so I did some research about why my ads were different than my husbands page and I found out that all of your information like your bday, relationship status, book your reading and other personal tidbits on Facebook is used by them to help advertisers better target their ads. I'm not sure if they have the capability to take chat conversations and use those, but I'm sure they are saved in a place where something (or someone) can read them and pull out valuable information. Even your picture albums are scanned for keywords that might indicate what you are interested in so that an advertiser can better reach its audience. 

2.  Trouble Deleting your Facebook account - Until 2007 Facebook never deleted information of a user when one deleted their Facebook account. It was more like suspending an account, which meant, one can get their account and all the information back anytime if they decided to join Facebook again. In 2008, Facebook introduced an option to delete the account. Even today, one has to be sure not to just deactivate their account but also check other preferences to make sure that your account is deleted for sure, this happened to me I thought my account was deleted and about a month ago I was able to log back in by reactivating my acct. and I was shocked to see that all my pictures, post, friends everything was still there even though I thought I had deleted it months before it is creepy to me that facebook kept all my information.

3.  Addictive - With tons of applications available out there, Facebook is one of the most addictive sites on the Internet. People get hooked on applications and games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. Many schools report that the average grade of students has gone down and the main cause is social networking sites.  I myself was on there way to much just wasting time, since I have deleted my facebook I have picked up new hobbies like:  making hair bows for Rhys =) photography and reading so much more.

4.  Scams -  With so much of your private information available in your Facebook account, it's easy for scam artists and hackers to use this information to target your other accounts—such as, email, banking, and PayPal.  No matter how secure a website is, hackers always find a way around so they can try to spread worms and viruses via the website. Since news spreads very fast on Facebook, a click on an unknown link is all that is needed to spread the virus to your friends, their friends and so on.  Last summer someone hacked our computer and was able to access our email & online banking, months later my bank called us and shared that our debit card had been compromised and that someone probably accessed our information through our email from online shopping.  I was so alarmed by the situation that I didn't get online for weeks until we had our computer completely cleaned out and new security software installed.

All of my family and friends have a Facebook I am not anti-Facebook its just not for me I made this post to explain why I have issues with Facebook I am not trying to get everyone to delete theirs.  I hope this info will help you be more aware and safe on there =)