Greetings, brethren. It's my pleasure to present the second in our "Dear Facebook" editorial series, in which we put the entire Facebook community on a pedastel, throw topical questions at it and make up semi-ludicrous answers till somebody's lawyers start sharpening their pencils.

Last week was all about fish. This week, slightly less humorously, we're looking at the problem of data security (or lack thereof). Facebook gets a lot of stick on this front, and it's high time Flytrap stuck its collective nose in.

Dear Facebook: are my details secure?

1. Yes, unless you actually write online about your life and interests in any halfway sincere and open manner.

Whenever you join a Rob Patterson fan-group, express an interest in Lily Allen's next single, comment on a link or update your status box with details of that bacon butty you bought in Morrisons, you're allowing third parties to build up a picture of your personality, income bracket, favourite daily haunts, associates, etc - to say nothing of such fraud-friendly details as your birth date, residence and contact details.

Best think carefully about what you allow other users to see. Stay out of the "friending" race, too: some of those apparently innocent requests might come from stealth marketeers or hackers - or worst of all, old school friends with whom you no longer have anything in common whatsoever.

2. Yes, unless your attitude to applications is "the more the merrier".

According to its privacy policy, Facebook doesn't screen or approve application developers prior to letting them board the bandwagon. While the company's terms of use forbid developers from hoovering up user data willy-nilly, and also require that they make clear which user data an app will draw on and why, there are no measures in place to identify dodgy operators in advance. It's all a little too "bolt the door after the horse has flown" for comfort.

So don't open your arms to each and every app that comes calling. Watch out for those fire-and-forget quizzes especially - under Facebook's default user account settings, these apps have access to a fair bit of personal detail, as the American Civil Liberties Union's pleasantly ironic What Do Quizzes Really Know About You app indicates.

3. Yes, as long as you don't use Facebook.

We live in a hyper-connected, hyper-communicative age, and there's no longer room for the antiquated notion of "personal information". Online social networking basically entails handing over your right to privacy, letting the world at large run its coffee-stained, biscuity fingers over both your inner life and bank details. Don't worry though - in a few years Twitter will morph into Skynet and all online fraudsters will be murdered in their beds.

4. Yes, they're entirely secure - and why not pick up a novelty coaster set to go with those connoisseur wine glasses you bought the other week with your Visa Gold card from the pretty young redhead in IKEA who once accidentally photographed you mooning a school bus in Dorset.

No, don't bother logging back in - it's now impossible to log out. Your life savings are presently being wired to Mark Zuckerburg's piggy bank.

(Less vacuous tips to maximising your security can be found here.)