Social netSTALKING

What would we do without Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter? How in the world did people survive without them for thousands (or millions depending on who you ask) of years? Social networking has become much more than a fad or way to spend free time when everyone else is busy on Friday night.

God knows these sites didn't need the free advertising that my links above provide. The fact that I am able to freely post these links and refer people to these pages from my own little corer of the blogging world demonstrates a principle unique to the internet.

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, in his testimony before the U.S. House of Repesentatives stated that, "new data integration capabilities, when directed at personal information, pose substantial privacy challenges which are hardly addressed by today's privacy laws." The fact is that we are all vulnerable to identity theft crimes which are the fastest growing group of crimes in the U.S. The worst part about it is that a lot of us are digging our own graves.

When speaking of how thiefs obtain our personal information, Berners-Lee says, "people actually reveal a lot about themselves, but with the intent that it only used in certain contexts by certain people." Are we giving ourselves away, literally? Stay tuned for more discussion on the future of the web, what we need to do to protect ourselves, and what some of the newest threats may be.