Once upon a time, MySpace was THE social networking site on the Internet.  Back in June of 2006, it was the most popular social networking site in the United States.  In April of 2008, it was overtaken by its competitor, Facebook.  Despite advances in technology, however, both sites have always been on the receiving end of various types of criticism, most notably, the way they can make personal information overly publically accessible.

MySpace was created in August 2003 as an imitation of Friendster.  It was created by a number of eUniverse employees, among them Tom Anderson (everybody’s first MySpace friend) and had every advantage starting up due to being launched by eUniverse, which simply advertised MySpace to the 20 million eUniverse users, very quickly building a strong following.

Facebook, on the other hand, was initially only available to students at Harvard University (where its creators attended school), and was gradually expanded to include other Boston-area schools (including BC), and then ultimately to anyone aged 13 or over.  Currently, Facebook has more than 400 million users worldwide.

One of the major advantages of Facebook versus MySpace, for a long time, was the privacy features.  MySpace had an option to make one’s entire profile private or not, and only recently has begun to do more fine-tuning (choosing which features of one’s profile were going to be private vs. public).  Facebook, on the other hand, allows users to control virtually every aspect of their privacy.  This is a powerfully attractive feature, as one of the strongest criticisms of social networking sites is that it makes it easier for stalkers to stalk people.  However, on Facebook, many of these privacy features need to be “activated”, and as such, simply signing up for a Facebook account does not guarantee one the privacy one might wish for.  For maximum privacy, these settings need to be adjusted, and many less experienced users may not even be aware of how much of their profile content is publicly accessible.

Another  criticism of Facebook has been that it’s not as easy to “personalize” a profile as it is on MySpace.  On a MySpace profile, depending on one’s level of expertise, absolutely everything can be customized, while Facebook profiles tend to be much more static.  However, it’s always been this author’s opinion that excessive customization on MySpace profiles leads to the exact issues that too many external apps do; namely, the profile get bogged down, don’t load, and eat up phenomenal amounts of bandwidth.   Facebook has a much better integration of its “extra” features, like games, applications, etc.  With MySpace, loading those external apps tended to bog down one’s profile greatly, while on Facebook, all these things are neatly sorted.

Of course, both sites have faced their fair share of criticism (Wikipedia.com has a whole page dedicated to Facebook criticisms) for numerous issues, as no newly-emerging technology is perfect.  With so many users, these social networks are akin to vast cities, so inherently there will be issues.  While the creators of these sites do what they can to meet user demand, it’s also a responsibility of the users themselves to be aware, when in such vast cities, who they are in contact with, what kind of personal information they are sharing, and most importantly, how to prevent sharing information one would rather keep private.

Just like in any large city, users need to be aware of themselves and their surroundings at all time.  That’s just good common sense.

YouTube video concerning cyberstalking

Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. He was recently aked a question by CNN producer John D. Sutter while at TED Conference in Long Beach, California.

The question was what is the most destructive technology on the planet? Surprisingly, he answered that the internet is. He did say that its not necessarily the internet but what we can use the internet for that is dangerous and destructive. Here is the full article.

I do not agree with him in the sence that the internet is not a problem at all. The problem is us humans and what we do with it. It is up to our conscious and intelligence to use any tool for the betterment of humanity. A perfect example of this is the atomic bomb. Yes its purpose was for mass destruction. But it also ushered in the atomic age. We now have nuclear power plants that provide us with much cleaner energy than other methods. When the arrow was invented, it probably was invented for hunting, yet it was also used for war.

Any new technology has the potential to be used for both good and bad. We have always had to choose between those two options. Nothing has changed. What we really need to worry about is to educate ourselves about the internet and its diversity and put it to good use.

Alysson Luiz Bastos

Cybercrime changes and develops everyday and most state and federal law does not have decisions or precedential judgment to guide the prosecution of crimes committed on the internet. Much of the difficulty in prosecution is first obtaining the evidence of the crime. As with any investigation, the police have to get a warrant from the court. Usually it covers your computer and your email accounts but what about tracking which websites visited and information that could link a suspect to the crimes he’s being accused of?
The information detectives need is requested via mail, fax or emailing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and there is a significant delay processing these requests which hinders the investigation. Law enforcement agencies frustrated by this are pushing for ISPs to begin storing data about their users for up to 5 years and to respond to inquiries about their subscribers within hours vs. days. In addition to this, agencies are also asking for a private interface be developed so that such inquires can be sent and received electronically. This seems great in theory but is it? Some supporters of this measure believe that providers who currently do not retain this information are “unwittingly facilitating internet crimes” because their lack of data preservation allows predators of children and identity theft to have virtually no trail of evidence. With this position, is it really in the best interest of the ISP to cooperate and maintain the records? Would the next expectation be that of holding them accountable to report/monitor activity found to be suspicious? If they don’t, does that make the ISP liable in a civil suit? In order to facilitate this request, the law must first address the protection of the ISP from civil liability. In addition, the law must also define the extent of the monitoring as not to violate First Amendment rights.
Criticism of this request comes from more place than just one. The judiciary community questions the security of such interface and whether it could jeopardize the confidentiality in an investigation and or the prosecution of suspects due to the potential for tampering with evidence. Other concerns include the potential for unnecessary monitoring and record requests by law enforcement officials who opt to abuse their position of authority. If this were to be enforced, the laws would need to identify specific needs for the request and the technology would need to be free from security breaches or else every case tried and convicted would be subject to appeal.
One thing is clear. ISPs need to be more efficient in processing criminal investigation requests in order to protect their subscribers. Investment in hiring more people to service the law enforcement agencies exclusively is an alternative to facilitating this request and resolving any questions that creating such interface would generate. Without that, the only people they are protecting are those the rest of us need protection from.