The Big Felafel

Who are your Facebook friends?

After the U.S. invaded Iraq we made sure that they had the essentials. There would be plenty of food, or at least a McDonalds and a Burger King. The government would be democracy even if it is just a puppet. But I never thought that the Iraqis would have Facebook.

That’s right, two days ago I was “Facebooked” by an Iraqi citizen requesting to be my friend. Me- the American Jewish woman living in Israel. Gee, I wonder why he wanted to be my friend. After I decided to decline his offer I couldn’t help but think, Facebook made it to Iraq.

I understand the media has an angle and when it comes to Iraq it is either CNN’s news coverage of a war on terror being lost or Fox’s feature stories on a society getting back on its feet- but never ever did I see a broadcast about Iraqis surfing the web and being a part of the Facebook trend.

And yet, how did this guy even find me.

Well it turns out that Facebook allows anyone to search for you on their welcome page as long as your search privacy setting is set to “Everyone.” I see nothing wrong with this, however; in a few weeks these searches will also be accessible through search engines like Google. Sounds a little scary to me that anyone can have access to my basic profile.

But Facebook ensures me that for anyone to access my full profile they must still be a registered Facebook user and contact me. Phew, here I thought the whole world wide web will get my digits, now it is narrowed down to selected nuts that have registered user names, how many people can that be?

Reassuring…Not really. Am I comfortable with Facebook putting my name, picture and location for all to see on searches throughout Google and who knows where else? That is definitely not what I signed up for, but as long as Facebook can make another dollar off of me then what’s stopping them from exploiting my name. And it is not as though I am just about to dump my whole account in order for random strangers to not contact me. My hands are tied in the internet’s web.

We are truly in the Internet age, a time where it has become obvious that the internet rules our lives – all around the world- even in the most dangerous country in the world.

Who will request to be your friend or maybe just become a secret admirer?