personally i think any thought of using facebook in any way associated with the hobby is insane and dangerous.

coming from using FB for your hobbying.

If you read the GD and some local boards often enough, this issue has come up.

First:

Facebook uses facial recognition technology. If you create two accounts, Facebook will find you. It doesn't matter if one account has naked photoshopped pictures of yourself and the other has fully clothed pictures for family and friends.

If you friend lady X in her civilian life, be fully prepared to see a friend suggestion for lady X in her escort life.

If you friend lady X in her escort life, be fully prepared to see a friend suggestion for lady X in her civilian life.

Second:

Facebook uses cookies, IP addresses and MAC addresses to track you. Use the same IP address and device (MAC address) to access multiple Facebook accounts and they have the equivalent of your DNA. Facebook knows who you are regardless of how many accounts you have and how you try to deceive them.

Third:

When you give Facebook permission to access your email account to find "friends", basically all the information in your email account is collected including email addresses, contacts, phone numbers, addresses, names and so forth and stored on their servers. This data is analyzed using software programs to search for commonalities with all the 750,000,000 accounts they have and matches are made.

Once you give Facebook the password to your email account, they will continually access your email account to track for changes and collect new information added until you change the password on your email account or shut it down.

The same goes for guys. Many smart providers will use Facebook as a screening tool or tool to "fill in the blanks" and get as much personal information on you that she needs. You say you will not share your work info with her but you have it on your Facebook account with your public profile turned ON? She will find it and you wonder how she showed up at your work or house to talk to your wife two months later?

Also beware of the "Friends of Friends" sharing feature. You or her decide not to "friend" each other but all one has to do is become "friends" with someone on the others "friends" list and have have access to the same amount of information that would be available if they were your friend.

Every time Facebook releases a new feature, your security and privacy settings reverse back to default mode. You have to go back and reconfigure everything.

If you must have a Facebook profile.

1. Have only one personal account. Do not in anyway mix it up with the hobby.

2. Use a short form of your name if possible and not your full name.

3. Use a dummy email account to signup and not your main email account or create and update to a dummy email account.

4. Do not enter all that personal info about yourself like city, work, schools, DOB (use a fake), address, phone numbers, family members, relationships etc. Do not friend your work page or like it if possible.

4a. Think with the big head about those you friend. If necessary, it is ok to unfriend friends or shutdown your account altogether.

5. Disable your public profile.

6. Avoid creating other internet accounts using your Facebook email address and password. Also avoid using Facebook to participate in Internet discussions. Too easy for privacy settings to go awry and you become "public again." Your picture and name are there for all to see.

6. Constantly monitor your privacy and security settings. Your settings go to default mode every time a feature is released and your information becomes public unless you reconfigure. Learn how to use them.

7. Do not enable any password remember features or keep me logged in for XXXX of days features.

8. Do not multitask i.e. have Facebook open on one tab and gmail, amazon, ebay, twitter or something else open on another tab.

9. Log out when you are done all the time as hard as it is. Everyone notice how Google, Facebook and others are making it harder to log out? Two mouse clicks instead of one and no visible log out button anymore?

For the Internet or your PC.

1. Power OFF your PC or computing device at least once a day for a few hours.

2. Reset your IP address often if possible. Even better, use an anonymizer.

3. Clean out your cache which stores cookies, search, browsing, password history etc often.

4. Follow 6 - 9 above.

5. Do not use Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, ebay, Amazon, Yahoo as a one stop shop for everything. Example: If you use Gmail for email, then use Bing as your default search provider etc.

All the above will not protect you 100% and is not fool proof but for the novice it will help. If anyone has anymore suggestions, feel free to add. I am no expert but I pretend to be and I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I saw a provider that was a friend of mine and she commented on something my friend had said and I had previously commented to him as well.  Then when I saw her pciture, I think the first words out of my mouth were Holy Fuck....I immediately went to block that provider in FB.  I don't think providers would do anyone harm unless you were a or are a douche bag to her.  Unwritten agreement I like to believe that we respect each others privacy.