I’ve received several invitations from hi5, but I never signed up until today. I should have read the privacy policy before I registered.

It reads

hi5 collects personal information when you register, when you use hi5, when you visit hi5 pages or the pages of certain hi5 partners. hi5 may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies. Once you register with hi5 and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us. hi5 collects information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners. hi5 automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser.

Basically they have spyware.

hi5 collects your Hotmail or yahoo address lists and contacts. Once you register there is an e-mail that is sent to everyone in your address book. This e-mail is sent without your permission.

The website also requests, your hotmail and yahoo password. I never gave my password, I was not that gullible. However hi5 was still able to gather my information and contact those listed in my address back.

I finally was able to delete my account, through the instructions in their help file.

Hi5 is even worse than xanga and myspace.

I encourage all parents whose children have an account on hi5 to log into hi5 and delete their children’s account.

Too much personal information is being revealed on these websites, making it a haven for sexual predators. Parents need to wake up.

I for one, am very concerned with websites like hi5 that encourage children to post their photos and personal information.

I strongly suggest that if your child uses the computer and you have not been monitoring their activity, it is time that you found out just what they are doing.

Rose DesRochers