Band promoter's word to the wise

In "TalkBack" at the bottom of a CNET piece on schools dealing with teen blogging, there's a very credible message parents might find helpful from someone who uses MySpace.com for its music-community focus: "I visit mySpace to promote a band's profile," writes one Rob Stevens, "and find myself surprised to see the kind of information some people put on their profiles. There's one type of common profile that I guess it may use a form for the users to fill in. This form posts information that could be easily used for identity theft or blackmailing. I'm not trying to be paranoid, but I'm not naive either. There are a lot of perverts, cons, and criminals out there looking for victims. And I think some young surfers are just opening their front door to sickos. Let's hope they wake up and change their information." He's talking about the Web form MySpace users fill out to create a profile - they should know they don't have to answer all the questions, and they can be careful not to post personal information ill-intentioned people can use to contact them - this goes for other blogging/social networking sites, too, e.g., Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, Blurty.com, DeadJournal.com, STLpunk.com, etc.