Cool. Maybe you can tell me how to send a message without charging me $38 for telling me which button to push.

I can "reply", but without being able to send anything, Facebook is useless to me.

iai -

You must not be talking about the same thing as the rest of us. You have to sign up for Facebook (which is free) before you can send OR reply to messages. PM me if you like for more detail.

It was purported to be a genuine account for which I did sign up. Whenever someone sends me a message, I get a notification from Facebook with a six inch long address I can cut and paste to get to my connection, type in my ID, and read the message, and respond to it if I wish.
I was visiting out-of-state relatives for Thanksgiving. They are on Facebook. A message had come in from someone I do not know, BUT in the "people you might be interested in" box, there I was, complete with picture.
No thank you
BTW This article is no longer available
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20101018/2b65b90d-a821-441e-939e-b119ebb89c03

Iaibear, you can control exactly which information (picture, college you attended, age, etc.) is available to whom ("friends only", "friends + friends of friends", "everyone", "my coworkers", "those guys from FA.com", "that group I saw fit to create", etc.) in the "privacy settings" of your account. The default settings are not very restrictive, which is the main beef I hold with FB; fortunately you can easily remedy to that.

You can easily remedy that if you know where the controls are. I saw the information "picture, college, age" controls but after an hour or more looking I had not found the "available to whom" part. Nor did I see anything that said "Privacy Settings".
Thanks for the encouragement, but it is much easier to "ignore", the choice control which I did find.

I "could" tell you if I was on FB or not but then I'd have to kill you... so I won't.

btw iaibear look here for how to set privacy on FB
http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php

I would go with friends only if I were you.

Yup, good policy in general. I too set pretty much everything to "friends only" or more restrictive, save for a few details and my very neutral profile picture, which are public just to let a potential old friend trying to find me know he's got the right person.

That gave me a very long article in a font size too tiny to read conveniently and so complex (what I could read of it) I was afraid I would be signing away my first born, if I ever had one.

I thank everyone who tried to help a cyber dinosaur. I believe I shall stick to the Forums, Personal Messages and e-mail from now on.
:-[