People can be very blase about what they give away. I try not to be (and don't use any of those sites which seem to lure personal info out of you) but I expect I give away more than I would want to, if I thought harder about it.
And the explanation is probably very true. You don't start looking over your shoulder until you have a good reason.
However, the one area which still bemuses me is that of the chuggers. A complete stranger approaches you on the street, says they're working for a charity and asks you to sign up to donate £x a month. And those nice people who don't want to be thought of as mean get out their bank cards and provide this complete stranger with all their personal detail.
While the stranger may well be honest and legitimately working for the agency who works for charities, can you be absolutely certain that everyone around you isn't listening in and recording all your detail? With identity fraud as bad as it is and getting worse, this seems such an obvious thing not to do, yet I see people standing on the street doing it every day.

I would post a comment but I am in a meeting at the moment.

I've just refused to let my address etc be put on the Diocesan website, though I don't mind it going in the handbook. Many people don't realise how easy it is to find them, and that information isn't going to be deleted once it isn't relevant.

Chuggers get short shrift from me I'm afraid, GoodTwin. I ask how many hours of their time my donation would pay for.

I've identified at least one person from their comments on a certain person's blog. It's a very small world and little white lies are very revealing!

I'd like to be able to think that it would be nice to be so naive as to believe that one could happily twitter everything to all and sundry believing everyone to be honest.

Sadly I'm a twisted old cynic. :(

As for lying, yes, it still shocks me how easily some people will engage in the most amazing untruths.

I wonder if those who so happily put their whole lives on the web are truthful in all they post and say? If so..... then again, if not....

Interesting.

I think it is a complex phenomenon. In the forefront are those people who truly believe that others are interested in them and therefore contributing the small details of their lives will be valued by the reader. Then, there are the self publicists who feel that others should be interested in them, by contributing the small details of their lives they will be more likely to of interest. Then you have - probably the vast majority - the Big Brother Generation who have bought into the idea that life needs to be lived in public. Ben Elton's Blind Faith satirises this rather well (although without a shred of subtlety).

The consequences of it all sail past them. The truth is that exposing themselves in this way does not automatically lead to disaster, it is merely a risk and we are notoriously bad at evaluating risks.

And lying incomprehensible? No, surely not. Any number of reasons for lies to be justified, If not to you, then at least to the perpetrator.

I had one bad experience using information on the internet. I don't do that anymore...ever. Also, I do not use my credit card numbers, etc. on the internet. there are too many very slick people around who know how to get that information and use it to rip you off.