Social Networking and E-mails: Dangerous?

Ever since the MySpace bang there's been hundreds if not thousands of other sites that have opened up to allow social networking. Soon after came Facebook which is considered to be better than MySpace by some people since the applications and features developed there started and soon after every other site followed.

However, soon after the fun started, came the problems, and people started using these sites to communicate with people they don't know, or have any connection with, probably even starting a relationship with them. After starting said relationship people would often want to meet the person whom they're talking to and seemingly like so much.

Over the past years we've heard of murders, kidnapping, raping, etc. and they all blame these social networking pages. A young girl would be contacted by someone who is apparently their age (who in the end happens to be a 40 year old man), they start flirting, messaging, and even texting, and then the guy asks to meet her.

Not only are murders happening but there's also the other side, in which people are being threatened and emailed, even being called.

About a week ago, my mother started being contacted by a woman, whose mails first were just to talk and soon they became threatening, she's been getting e-mails, messages at Facebook and this woman even started calling our house.

It's frightening to see how a social networking page can become a tool for people to track you down, get your phones, emails, and even more, when these pages are supposed to be for fun and contacting people you've probably haven't seen in years.

These pages are taking measures by making profiles private, not showing your real name, and asking you to block people who you don't know and report any unusual behavior or threatening behavior towards you.

Some people still blame these pages for even existing, and other people blame those who've been irresponsible and accepting people whom they don't know or contacting them.

The problem is, who is here to blame for that? Do they social networking have the blame, or the people who contact people who they don't know?