Comments on: Social Darknets

By: backgroundcheckpro

backgroundcheckpro — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:03:54 +0000

Six months ago, a widely published myspace hack made it possible for anyone to view the private profile comments of any user on that social network. So even the self-absorbed gen Y’ers who exercised remarkable restraint by electing to mark their online drama’s as “private” were not immune to having their exploits (both real & imagined) viewed by anyone who knew the special url.
I know this for a fact – it created some interesting conversation notes when I met my daughter’s new boyfriend for the first time!!!

By: Info/Law » Forcing those Web Skeletons Back Into the Closet?

Info/Law » Forcing those Web Skeletons Back Into the Closet? — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:32:51 +0000

[...] So much has this sort of online self-disclosure become second nature to some members of this cohort that they can be quite surprised when the more restrictive norms of earlier generations intrude. They may retaliate (as in this funny story from last weekend’s NYT) by bringing a taste of Generation-Y norms to us older folks. More commonly, they may simply get tripped up, as the job applicants and camp counselors in some of my earlier postings did, by the unfamiliar expectations of the generations that didn’t grow up online. At my wife’s company, for example, new employees have proudly shared their Facebook profiles with managers, even where said profiles prominently feature close-up photographs of said employees passed out after a little too much partying — after all, the employees are no doubt thinking, isn’t that sort of sharing, democratizing, and hierarchy-leveling what the internet is all about? (Well, that and the other thing.) [...]

By: Info/Law » Digital Is Forever

Info/Law » Digital Is Forever — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:30:20 +0000

[...] But the permanence of networked information has costs, too, which (like the benefits) are only beginning to be explored. Members of the generation just behind mine, who have grown up reflexively creating and posting information online, are learning that digital is forever — if you’re a job applicant (or even a camp counselor), anything that has ever been written by (or about) you online is, at least potentially, still there. (Back in my day, we used goofy aliases to hide our online identities; but I gather that practice has been fading.) Once information is online, it turns out, it may becomes quite hard ever to get it back offline again — the Wayback Machine preserves old web pages; Google Groups archives Usenet posts; and it’s only a matter of time before somebody comes up with the magic bullet that automatically archives IRC and IM conversations and makes them searchable. Even your deleted e-mails aren’t necessarily gone; they may still exist on backup tapes where law enforcement authorities can get them. The durability of digital content raises problems that touch on both informational security and individual privacy. [...]

By: Info/Law » More Alarmism Over Social Networking Sites

Info/Law » More Alarmism Over Social Networking Sites — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 13:59:32 +0000

[...] Following up on its earlier article about how college students’ profiles on social networking sites are turning off prospective employers (which I discussed here), today brings a new warning from the NYT on this digital peril: Young People’s Web Postings Worry Summer Camp Directors. The opening graf seems to channel Helen Lovejoy, labeling “sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster” a “scourge” of summer camp directors. Add the new story to this week’s news of a lawsuit against MySpace alleging that it failed to prevent a user from sexually assaulting a child, and it looks like only a matter of time before Congress starts calling for an investigation of this whole Internet thingy. So what’s going on with the summer camps? [...]