Never trust a man, who when left alone with a tea cosey… Doesn’t try it on.–Billy Connolly

Now, I’m the kind of guy who believes in transparency in public affairs and a kind of public integrity for pretty much everybody. You want to act like an asshole, fine, just so you’re up front about it. This doesn’t meant I want every thought in my head to be public knowledge but I’m pretty up front about my general beliefs even though I would be embarrassed, probably to have all my opinions spread across the internet.

I have friends whose writing I love and friends whose writing I don’t care for and people I don’t consider friends who, for some unknown reason, consider me their dearest buddy. I am polite in public and sometimes this means just a little bit less than completely honest.

So, one thing I want to be really careful about is not saying stuff in venue that will hurt people’s feelings. So, this kind of relates to Mad’s post about the train wreck that is The Moment of Truth. Both that and the following really fit into the category “What on Earth were they thinking?!”

An American insurance company, in defending its refusal to pay out a claim, is seeking to call in evidence personal online postings, including the contents of any MySpace or Facebook pages the litigants may have, to see if their eating disorders might have “emotional causes”. And the case is far from a lone one. Suddenly, those saucy pictures and intimate confessions on social networking sites can be taken down and used in evidence against you in ways never dreamed of.

In the US, a sex assault victim seeking compensation faces the prospect of her MySpace and Facebook pages being produced in court. In Texas, a driver whose car was involved in a fatal accident found his MySpace postings (“I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a drunkaholic”) part of the prosecution’s case. From Los Angeles to Lowestoft, thousands of social network site users have lost their jobs – or failed to clinch new ones – because of their pages’ contents. Police, colleges and schools are monitoring MySpace and Facebook pages for what they deem to be “inappropriate” content. Online security holes and users’ naivety are combining to cause privacy breaches and identity thefts. And what all this, and more, adds up to is this: online social networking can seriously damage your life.

Just ask the 27 workers at the Automobile Club of Southern California fired for messages about colleagues on their MySpace sites; the Florida sheriff’s deputy whose MySpace page revealed his heavy drinking and fascination with female breasts – and swiftly found himself handing in his badge; the Argos worker in Wokingham fired for saying on Facebook that working at the firm was “shit”; the Las Vegas teacher at a Catholic school fired after he declared himself gay on his MySpace page; the staff of an Ottawa grocery chain fired for their “negative comments” on Facebook; the 19 Northampton police officers investigated for Facebook comments; and Kevin Colvin, an intern at Anglo Irish Bank, who told his employers he had a family emergency, but whose Facebook page revealed he had, in reality, been cavorting in drag at a Hallowe’en party.

“Facebook Can Ruin Your Life” at The Independent