Cyberlaw Central

Hat tip to BeSpacific for the link to this article posted at PC World by Rosemark Haworth entitled “A Guide to Protecting Your Identity Online.”

Among the tips include:
- Letting people within your networks search your profile in Facebook may not be such a good idea.
- Know who your friends are, and know if they truly are friends of your friends before you make them your new friend.

Cyberlaw Central Commentary
These are good tips and may make people more careful when online. For example, people on Twitter commonly post details about where they are *now*, which may not be the house or other areas you may not want the masses to know are unwatched. Certainly something to think about as we become so interconnected and online. Apple’s new version of .mac is entitled “Mobile Me” for a reason - it’s a tool for people to use and stay synchronized across devices as their lives go increasingly “into the cloud.” We just need to be careful and consciously choose what we make public as we use these networked tools.

I am excitedly planning to read Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. It’s out in a free Creative Commons licensed version, linked above, as well as one you can buy through places like Amazon.

If you don’t recognize Jonathan’s name, you haven’t been following Internet legal issues for very long. Here’s a link to his Wikipedia entry if you want to catch up on all he’s done in this area.

I will report back once I’ve had an opportunity to read and digest the thoughts in the new book.