These social networking sites often make it easy to forget that the whole world is possibly looking at you because your network is usually familiar, close friends. Luckily, these sites do offer privacy options for neurotic victims of identity theft,like myself. As a side note, a friend who graduated from Brooklyn Law School last year went on an interview and her interviewer asked her questions about her MySpace profile - there was nothing scandalous on there...just something along the lines of "So, you like to ski and watch Friday NIght Lights?"

As a victim of identity theft - a theft which most certainly occurred through getting my personal information on-line and was a gigantic burden that I'd rather not revisit - I just feel relieved that these perpetrators were identified. Its so easy for anonymous crime to occur in the internet context and for a large company to think they can pull it off is a scary thought. As the nature of transactions change and more and more transactions must take place on-line, a system/mechanism must be put in place so that consumers have a real reason to trust e-commerce.

As a victim of identity theft - a theft which most certainly occurred through getting my personal information on-line and was a gigantic burden that I'd rather not revisit - I just feel relieved that these perpetrators were identified. Its so easy for anonymous crime to occur in the internet context and for a large company to think they can pull it off is a scary thought. As the nature of transactions change and more and more transactions must take place on-line, a system/mechanism must be put in place so that consumers have a real reason to trust e-commerce.

This article was really interesting, especially in light of some of the topics we've covered in class so far. Specifically I have the Yahoo/France case in mind. I think its become clear, based on the nature of the internet, that these are international issues and cannot be dealt with within individual countries alone. In reading this article, I was particularly struck by this line: "By contrast, the United States has no all-encompassing federal privacy law but rather a scattershot approach to privacy, state by state and industry by industry." The Pataki case came to mind and it just seems impractical (and impossible) to have effective or realistic state-by-state laws regarding internet issues. Even federal is a stretch with the global characteristics of the internet.