Ah, the poor debt collector, what a burden he carries these days. When I started in my legal career over 30 years ago, debt collectors could declare open seaso

Ah, the poor debt collector, what a burden he carries these days. When I started in my legal career over 30 years ago, debt collectors could declare open season on their victims and pretty much harass them without limit: calling up at all hours of the night, lying through their teeth about what might happen if you did not accede to their demands, pestering friends, relatives, employers, and anyone else in reach once they had exhausted their arsenal on the hapless debtor, and when all that didn't work, cynically start the process up again the next day until the poor soul was worn out from the continuous beating. All of this has radically changed in the past several decades, to the point where debtors (and, dare I say, deadbeats too) now pretty much have the upper hand with collectors when it comes to fending off their efforts to win through harassment or intimidation. A fascinating write-up on this appears here (http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-01-21/news/better-off-deadbeat-craig-cunningham-has-a-simple-solution-for-getting-bill-collectors-off-his-back-he-sues-them/ http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-01-21/news/better-off-dea...) and that piece in turn sparked an interesting HN discussion on the topic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075903 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075903). Essentially, there are now innumerable laws that permit debtors to sue debt collectors who slip up on even small issues in the way they handle their collection efforts. What is more, the entire industry depends on hiring low-skilled workers whose main talent is to intimidate and such persons are normally not astute enough to avoid the legal traps. The hope is that most people will remain ignorant of the laws protecting debtors while the harassment continues. Accordingly, this game turns on playing the percentages. I have dealt with people at the wholesale end of this business and, believe me, the amounts they pay to acquire debt packages are miniscule in relation to the size of the debts involved (often as low as 1% of the face amount of the paper). Thus, it is rare that any of this ever winds up being pursued in court (at least for the low-quality packages) because that would never pay. The goal, rather, is to scare people into paying. This means, of course, first finding the person so that the process can begin. And this in turn places a huge premium on whatever data might exist by which a debtor might be tracked. So, yes, the debt collectors will use all forms of social media available as well as any accompanying tricks that might lead to finding their targets. Facebook may adopt policies to try to limit some of this but I would doubt that this would be effective except against flagrant offenders. Anti-harassment laws likely would be more effective, assuming the debtor is savvy enough to know about them and to use them effectively. In the meantime, this cat-and-mouse game will continue on and on, as it has for eons, only it will now involve the new playing ground of social media.