I read an article and decided to post about it since it is related to Internet security, cyberlaws, and cybercrimes — topics I have recently considered to blog about. The article talks about Internet defamation and libel which are common occurrences in the Internet nowadays. This is probably because those who are not familiar with how the Internet works think that the anonymity afforded by the Web is sufficient to shield them from any liability arising from cyber bullying, libel or defamation. Unfortunately, hiding under a screen name does not afford you the protection you thought you had—specially if you use that anonymity to defame someone who decides not to let it pass.

Even for hackers, the most difficult part of compromising the security of a system is NOT the breaking in part but the covering-your-tracks part. Why? Because anonymity is nothing but a false sense of security. If the hacker decides not to cover his tracks thinking that it is unnecessary as he is already anonymous anyway, then it won’t be long before he hears the Feds knocking on his door with a warrant to serve for his arrest.

In a post I just came across, Andrew Kameka said that if you are to defame someone on the Internet, be sure to have a team of expensive cyber-lawyers and a couple million dollars or so. You might also need a lot of paperbacks just in case you are given some years after the gavel falls instead of simply being asked for some loose change. (A few million of them)

Rosemary Port learned that the hard way. She thought that lambasting Liskula Cohen and calling her names on her blog without revealing her real identity is safe. She thought wrong. A US court forced her blog host, Google, to reveal her identity. The next thing she knew, she’s already a star. If big G could be asked to cooperate, any other blog host would also be as cooperative as not one of them has a choice on the matter.

If you are reading this and you happen to be a blogger, always be mindful of the dangers of Internet or online defamation and libel. It could land you in places you don’t want to be.

If you think it is impossible to face jail time of up to 293 years and a bail bond of 75 Thousand Dollars (Yup, that’s 75 Grand—$75,000.00) for pretending to be a girl in Facebook, think again. An Eighteen-year-old high school boy just found this out for himself. His attorney said that he will pay twenty dollars for electronic monitoring with a GPS device and have adult supervision if he is released from jail.

But to make things clearer, just pretending to be a fairy was not really what placed this boy in hot water. After pretending to be a she, he just cannot help himself from contacting 31 male classmates of his on Facebook and convincing them to send him naked pictures of themselves. Now, as if this cruel prank was not enough, he used those pictures to blackmail at least seven of those poor boys who thought that he was the fairest of them all.

What he blackmailed them for, you ask? Well, it’s for some boy on boy bed adventure. (I must admit that in this blog, I sometimes find it easier to spell longer words than three-lettered ones) Now that changes everything, don’t you think? (Oh, and investigators also found around 300 pictures of the accused’s male classmates)

Securing your privacy on the Web is a tenuous proposition at best. The more so when you participate in certain online activities like chat, email and now, Facebook. The site is alleged to have been breaking a Canadian privacy law otherwise known as The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. This law only allows the retention of personal information by companies when it is still necessary to meet appropriate purposes. Facebook, however, retains such personal information even after the termination of its service such as after an account has been deactivated or closed.

It’s not a secret that I’m fond of social media like Twitter. Hardly a day passes by without me sending tweets about links that I just discovered in the Web or in Twitter itself. And since Facebook is another form of social media, I have also been looking at it. But privacy has always been a concern. This is aggravated in Facebook due to the ever so popular applications. These applications made Facebook popular but are also a privacy concern since there are few restrictions on data access.

The privacy officer seems to be saying that people come to Facebook to share information and not to hide them. I don’t know if there are other ways of interpreting that statement but to me, what the officer is trying to say in effect is that privacy is not much of a concern there. I beg to differ. When someone joins a social networking site like Facebook, it may be true that she does not intend to hide information but I’m also sure that she also does not want to share it with just about anybody in the world.