@ Tangledwood, Good point about not putting much personal data on FB, e.g., phone #, DOB, where you went to H S etc.    Even if you don't include the year, if you give your real name and birthday, it'd be pretty easy to track you unless you have a very common name.   I have very little such identifying info on my FB page (and even my home city is mis-identified), so I don't worry much about people using FB for ulterior purposes.

@ tomi, Yes, there can be various reasons for wanting to "friend" a "friend" of one of your FB friends - e.g., to be able to participate in "conversations" that your "friends" post on their "wall" by way of their "friends'" pages. As buddhuu points out, suggesting a FB "friend" to one of your friends is the virtual counterpart of introducing one RL ("real life") friend to another who has common interests, skills, etc.

Some of the most interesting and/or useful links and information I've gotten on FB has been from "friends" whom I've never met personally and probably never will.

But it's easy to ignore a "friend" request or to send a PM to someone who wants to "friend" you, asking for more info before you decide whether to accept or request.

That said, FB does seem to generate a lot of its own "friend suggestions" and I usually ignore them if it seems like they're only there because we have at least one FB "friend" in common.

Oh, and, C-flat, I agree about cutting folks a bit of slack on FB. I've even had another Mudcatter FB friend PM me to ask why I had "suggested" to them that they "friend" someone I didn't even know (virtually or otherwise).   I suspected the FB elves themselves, but at any rate, that suggestion didn't come from me.