5 Ways Facebook is Costing You Money

This post is by Suba at Wealth Informatics: debt reduction, financial planning, informed Consumerism, savvy investing, fun & frugal living leading to financial freedom.

I am not talking about Facebook costing you via all the lost productivity that you could have used to make money or time spent with your family. I am talking about Facebook directly costing you money, real hard earned money.

1. Spending Real Money to Buy Imaginary Farms

I used to play Farmville. After two weeks it got boring. How long can you sit and watch the crops grow? But people not only spend time on this game, they spend real money. Farmville, Petville, Cityville, Mafiawars… there is a whole array of virtual worlds waiting for your money.  To highlight this, the parent company of most of these games is Zynga.  Zynga’s monthly revenue is currently estimated at over $50 million per month.  If it has a fairly standard margin of 30%, that means its pocketing over $15 million per month!  Where does this money come from?  Facebook users.  Furthermore, Zynga accounts for 31% of all app usage on Facebook.  Its nearest competitor is Facebook itself, which only accounts for 14% of usage.

2. Employment Opportunities

A 2009 report shows that 45% of the employers use social media to research their prospective employees. And they are finding a gold mine of information too. 90% of social media users didn’t bother to check the employer’s privacy policy before applying for jobs.  Furthermore, most Facebook users don’t change the privacy settings of their pages to prevent outsiders from seeing their information.  Here are some statistics from the study.

• Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information – 53 percent
• Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs – 44 percent
• Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients – 35 percent
• Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29 percent
• Candidate made discriminatory comments – 26 percent
• Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 percent
• Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 percent

If you don’t clean up your act before looking for a job, be prepared to lose a great opportunity. It is already getting very difficult to land a job in this economy, why make it harder?

3. Becoming an Easy Target

Facebook not only helps friends keep track of your whereabouts, but it helps robbers too. Apparently some New Hampshire robbers checked Facebook to figure out who would be home at a certain time of the day. With people describing their detailed vacation plans on Facebook/Twitter, which might be accessed by anyone, it makes it very easy for robbers to target you.  Also, now that Facebook has the “check-in” feature, prospective criminals can easily see if you just “checked-in” someplace far away, which tells them you are not home.  In 2007, the average loss for a residential burglary was $1,991.  Don’t let yourself fall victim.

4. Insurance agents

Yes, insurance agents. Do you like putting pictures of how you would like to take your car street racing? Or do you proudly state in your status that you are a chain smoker? Expect your car insurance and your life insurance to shoot up. Though there is no reliable methods in place for data mining Facebook, an increasing number of insurers are using Facebook to provide better services to customers as well as judge customers. An inappropriate posting or a picture could cause your insurance to be canceled or the price to go through the roof.  With insurance rates set to rise nationwide, don’t let a picture get you in trouble.

5. Identity Fraudsters

We take so many steps to avoid identity theft in real life, but for some reason we let ourselves loose in the digital world. A lot of people put their home address, exact birth date and even mother’s maiden name online in their profile. About 40% of social media users shared their physical address in social media sites and 90% of them (gasp!) didn’t view the  privacy policy before using the site. Any identity theft will cause a great deal of money and headache to fix.  Even though there are many new federal and state laws to protect victims of identity theft, it still ends up costing the average victim $373 dollars to fix all the problems caused by the thief.

I am sure a lot of people here use Facebook. Have you checked your privacy settings? Are you sure your information is safe and won’t cost you any money?