Myspace and Facebook are social networking sites that allow people to network both socially and professionally. My Space is a free site that allows people to keep in touch with friends and business associates, maintain a blog, upload music, join groups, and share videos. There is also a news section, classified ads, polls, and forums. My Space grows 230,000 new users per day. They join for many reasons – because their friends maintain pages that they want to view, to network with other professionals, to create a blog, or to view sites that celebrities have created.
Recently, many news articles on sites such as CNN reference MySpace and Facebook pages of people involved in crimes. A news article currently on CNN is about a mother who was convicted of three misdemeanors in connection with the suicide of a 13 year old girl who killed herself because of cyberbullying. Megan Meier thought that a boy she liked was the one posting mean comments when in reality it was the mother of one of Megan’s classmates. This is only one example of using MySpace as a way of harassing classmates, sometimes with lethal consequences.
Another article on CNN talks about the deaths of Jennifer Hudson’s family references the MySpace page of a suspect in those murders. Major news sites have started using these sites as sources of information on victims and suspects. This article uses the MySpace Page of William Balfour to determine the relationship of him to the victims. While this information could have been obtained from other sources the article references this page.
An article on Mail Online discusses a court case where a lawyer references a Facebook page as evidence. The defendant’s lawyer said that the judge should use leniency because while the victim claims she has been traumatized her Facebook pages show her as happy. They are using pictures that she posted in years since the attack as evidence that she is healing and must not have been as traumatized as she is saying.
Many people post freely on social networking sites not thinking about how this information can be used in the future. Prospective employs have used this information in employment decisions, news stations have used the information for stories, lawyers use the information as evidence. Others have used these sites to bully or stalk other people. While these sites allow people to stay in touch with friends and colleagues they should use caution in posting personal information in order to protect themselves.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/10/24/illinois.shootings/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1076965/Rape-victim-upset-Well-shes-smiling-Facebook-said-lawyer.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/26/internet.suicide/index.html?iref=werecommend
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