50Guy, I agree that there's a lot of personal information out on the net, and too many people post without thinking about the potential implications of what they're doing. But being visisble isn't all that bad.

I'm on facebook, and because of that, a cousin and a couple of long lost university friends got in touch with me.

I belong to Linked-In which is a professional's networking site, and my closest friend in university found me by googling my name and my linked in profile came up and she got in touch. I just got back from visiting her yesterday and it was wonderful to see her again. I also get calls from headhunters periodically based on my Linked-in profile, so now that I'm unemployed, I'm really planning on beefing it up and being a lot more visible there.

I also belong to Happen, which is a regional networking group for unemployed professionals. You can upload a profile of yourself to their web page and headhunters can browse it. That's how I got my last job, a recruiter saw my profile on Happen and thought I'd be a good fit for a job.

So for me the benefits of being visible far & away outweigh any of the negatives.

--splitimage