It's easy to imagine how we could make something worse than "Girls Around Me"—something much worse. Facebook encourages us to disclose a wide range of information about ourselves, including our religion and a photograph. Religion is obvious: "Yids Among Us" would obviously be one of the go-to tools of choice for Neo-Nazis. As for skin colour, ethnicity identification from face images is out there already. Want to go queer bashing? There's an algorithm out there for guessing sexual orientation based on the network graph of the target's facebook friends. It's probably possible to apply this sort of data mining exercise to determine whether a woman has had an abortion or is pro-choice.

Go EuroParl:

Use a spell-checker, I mean. I’m serious. And do the things that people who use spell-checkers do: Take care to be present and accurate and orderly and coherent. If this is a little too abstract, let me dress it up in a numbered list, just like a self-help book title: Ten Steps To Online Success In The Post-Branded Future.

Essay about security, specifically looking at the potential danger of biometrics being misunderstood and therefore misued. (via <a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/identity_authen.html">Bruce Schneier</a>)