This profile is set to private.

I can't speak for everybody else's motives but I can tell you mine. Just because I parked my car in a public place doesn't mean I want everybody who walks by to have an access to my car. Social sites are exactly that. A place where I can socialize with MY friends, not with strangers. Also it has to do with type of profile, or degree of details in it. There are some sites that have only basic profiles & there are others that have little more detail profiles.

Many people choose to set their profiles as private because they join these sites to join in with their friends, not to attract attention from outside their group. So if you are a friend you will see their profile otherwise you don't.

One reason I can think of is that the person joined the site, because most of his friends are already on it. This person is not really looking for new friends, & is only there to associate online with the friends he has. This is true about women. Quite often, guys seem to have lost their manners online. Therefore she may have her profile set to private to avoid these people. I would not be surprised to hear that women can lose their manners when they see a certain guy as well, but I have not heard of a situation like this happening.

Hi, Ice! I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not interested in spending time on someone who thinks they have to keep themselves so secret, but they go on-line anyway. It doesn't make sense at all...

hi ice, i prefer to be private to the people i do not know. anyways, once i accept an invitation and they get to my list, they are already allowed to view. and that is my prerogative, only friends can see, not outsiders. ann

People don't want to express more on online. I don't want to present my profile online. Net is not safe now. There are various problems related with net. Security theft and the identity published in net carries some problems. people don't want to put themselves in risk so they don't want to disclose everything in net.

Somepeople are like you and I, and we get on line because we want to meet NEW people, whereas there are plenty of others who's only reason for being on line is to communicate with people they may already know, such as family and friends who live far away, and for whom it's easier to communicate on line. Also, this is a defult setting for Facebook.

some people only choose to associate with people they know or they've gone private because they've been harassed online...

This is done to protect one privacy and only intended for friends or to those closest to the person making their profile set to private since not all people are nice their are those nasty so they need to be deleted or else they would be a nuisance.

this is one thing I can't understand myself. I have a profile on the tagged.com webisite. I have these friends request that come up all the time and I look to check the profile prefore I accept. it is is set privaite, I did not accpet at all. this is becaese I can't read anythning about that person who wants to friend me. the onely reason I can think they keep profile private is becesue they only want persons who are allready friends to commucate useing the site.

I do not have a myspace page just a facebook..... One thing I do make private is my address and my phone number....As far as my name I do not care if anyone knows...

Maybe their reasons for making their profile private, Are PRIVATE. Personally I have wished sometimes to make my profile into a PIRATE Or make my profile settings to AUTOPILOT - but that was another site altogether...

Some people make profiless on social networking sites only to connect with freinds and family who may not live in the area. I have private profiles becuase I have pictures of my children up, not becuase I have something to hide. They are there so that people who know me can see how they are growing up and what I am doing with my time and life. NOT so that random strangers can spy on me. Private profiles do not mean that you have something to hide or that you are trying to gain more friends through the alure of mystery. There was a time that people would not bat an eye at a private profile but now with todays "Look at ME!" society it seems strange to want, you know, privacy while still maintaining conncections. There is nothing wrong with being selective about who is in your life, there is nothing odd about someone not wanting the ENTIRE world in thier business.

Yeah, some people are actually afraid that their private information get misused. So they would only rather only reveal their information to their friends only. Being on a social network website do not mean that you want to socialise with strangers. I usually only accept friend requests on facebook from those I already know so that I can have additional way to contact them. By having private profile, you can control who can access your private information through friend request system, limiting abuse.

It varies for me. For myspace and facebook I would set it to private as I have been spammed before and sometimes all I have in my inbox would be someone who wants to befriend me to post marketing links that runs down my page. But here it's different as it's managed well.

i set some of my profiles to private in some of those sites. that is to let someone who wishes to view my complete profile, send me a request. by that point, you can see who are trying to have a connection with me. it's not that internet is public, there is still privacy in some sites. and they offer them or inform them about it so you have a choice, set public or private.

Like a number of users have already said: Sometimes, people only want their friends to see their profiles. They don't want it to be accessible to every stranger on the internet. Even if they let strangers add them as friends, at least they'll have a chance to filter out friend requests and reject those from really suspicious-looking users.