Facebook update -- are there really angry pitbulls?

Rob Manker's March 26, 2008 article on the Tribune website, "Flushing common sense down the Facebook toilet," serves as a kind of humorous reinforcement of the story I ran on Page One on March 25, "Another Facebook security breach."

Manker recounts how, with management's urging, he joined Facebook. (Apparently, the newspapers have finally figured out that this Internet thing may not just be a fad after all. And, sad but true, a Facebook presence gives professional reporters immediate access when tragedy strikes -- for example -- on a college campus.)

Anyway, having joined Facebook, Manker writes, he felt compelled to participate. He "made friends, joined groups, built a photo gallery, drank virtual beers and became a vampire. The standard stuff. I even logged in a few times a day to update what I was doing...."

Here was where he ran into trouble. He posted -- for all the world to see -- that he'd be on vacation. Manker said he felt "so compelled to keep everyone abreast of my every move that I flushed common sense down the cyber-toilet."

He tried to rectify things with additional announcements: "Rob is on vacation, or is he? ...Rob is an expert marksman.... Rob is hoarding angry pit bulls."

It may or may not have been necessary for him to make these declarations -- but apparently no one burgled his home while he and his family vacationed.

Several comments posted to the article scoff at Mr. Manker's old-fashioned (if belated) caution, citing Facebook's privacy settings and so forth, but I applaud it. He says, in an entertaining way, what I've tried to say a couple of times at least: Anything you put onto the Internet can be seen. Maybe it won't be seen... but maybe it will burble up and wound you at just the wrong time.