" But while he should be embarrassed, he should not be destroyed. Again and again, we see people who make one mistake either forced out of their jobs or held up for brutal public excoriation. But the more we live in public, the more we need to develop some sort of mercy for those who briefly let the dark parts of themselves slip out, particularly when they’re truly sorry afterward. "

response to "You should be more careful what you write. You never know when a future employer might read it."

"Online, though, sexual harassment is not only tolerated - it's often lauded. Blog threads or forums where women are attacked attract hundreds of comments, and their traffic rates rocket."

Sites have emerged offering advice to parents on monitoring their children's social networking profiles (for drug references, sexual photos, etc.) or offering to monitor, decipher, and send reports to parents (just parents?...) for a subscription fee.

"I don't want to be forced to hide everything about myself. If some potential employer doesn't like my blog, that's an employer I don't need. If the government wants to persecute me for what's contained in my stored messages, then I will fight back..."

"there will also be "editors" who have more authority because of their background as specialists... Sanger strongly believes that the valuing of expert knowledge would attract more people from the scientific community and thus improve the overall quality"

"Ann Springer, staff counsel for the American Association of University Professors, said ... “The professor’s presentation in class is the professor’s intellectual property, and to submit it to a Web site is a violation of those rights..." "

""What used to be private diary entries, or letters, or personal revelations, have now become accessible ‘public records’. We all need to realize that employers and colleagues in the future will have access to our personal postings for years to come"

"Business owners sometimes gripe that Yelpers ... don't fully explain what bothered them ... or complain about something that's out of the proprietor's control" ... "readers don't know whether a positive posting was encouraged by special treatment."

"ClaimID is a service that lets you claim the information that is about you online. That information is then associated with your name, providing folks an easy way to see what is and isn't about you online."

"More employers are looking online to learn about their employees. Some people are putting sensitive personal information on Web sites, such as myspace.com and friendster.com. And some employers are watching."

"In May, Jackson took his interest in Myspace.com a step further, creating his own profile page, where he began posting poetry, chapters of a novel he had written, and what he described as "humor writing." He also mentioned a song parody, "

"New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

"Prior to the internet, investigators would use college yearbooks, bulletin board postings, alumni newsletters, and other tools ... Today, they use the power of the subpoena to obtain online records..."

"Andy Baio, "if you don't want to risk being the next Star Wars Kid, you should be very careful about what you videotape and where you keep it." With the growing numbers of video sharing websites this advice is more important than ever."