I personally don’t use Meebo, I’ve never had a reason to need to. However, Meebo does state on their homepage that they encrypt the passwords (as they should say). And they specifically state at the beginning of their privacy policy they do not store the passwords. No qualifiers. Meebo also hasn’t been caught (more than once) with their pants down around their ankles over privacy issues…at least that I’m aware of. I didn’t find anything specifically in the FB privacy policy regarding third party passwords they are collecting nor the other information needed to match people in your contact lists with FB profiles.

Of course I lean towards the paranoid site because of I’m aware of the degree social engineering and social sites are used to engage in questionable tactics from being used as a platform for spammers (MySpace incidents of phished accounts used by a CPA Network for spamming) to installation of adware (Zango on MySpace) to IM services exploited for all kinds of malicous behavior.

End users seem to have a blindness to security and privacy issues in the social context. The technology can give some cool features to end users. Companies using them need to be diligent in their privacy and security if end users are to feel confident in them long-term, a seeming critical point for social networks. For me, FB has a ways to go to earn my trust…but then again I’m on the paranoid user end of the spectrum. I do try to practice safe surfing.