Academics To Predict Next Twitter and Its Pitfalls 150
An anonymous reader writes "University researchers in the UK have put together a team tasked with predicting the next big thing in terms of communication technologies, in a bid to tackle ethical pitfalls before they become a problem. This is in the wake of the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, which has led to a dramatic increase in the amount of personal information available online."
Begs the question (Score:4, Informative)
Who in their right mind would ever put their own personal information on the web?
If people are stupid enough to do it, then let them be the victim of their own stupidity.
Anon.
Re:Social network medical records (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pseudonyms, encryption and Identity theft (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately Facebook, Myspace etc. do not allow pseudonymous identities. It is required that all information be accurate and truthful. Recently a woman in the US was convicted [wikipedia.org] for "unauthorized access" on Myspace because she signed up pretending to be some make-believe boy. There were aggravating factors that led to her investigation and arrest (she trolled some teenage girl who ended up killing herself), but, still, what she was convicted for was just that, computer fraud because of signing up on false pretences, not for harassment or anything like that.
I would have gotten a Facebook account a while ago if they did not have that requirement.