Assorted

Facebook goodness: "Walking the Cyberbeat"

...one of some 150 people the young company employs to keep the site clean—out of a total head count of 850. Facebook describes these staffers as an internal police force, charged with regulating users' decorum, hunting spammers and working with actual law-enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. Part hall monitors, part vice cops, these employees are key weapons in Facebook's efforts to maintain its image as a place that's safe for corporate advertisers—more so than predecessor social networks like Friendster and MySpace.

Here's an article on recommended settings for your, or your kids', facebook account:http://spylogic.net/downloads/Facebook_Privacy_and_Security_Guide.pdf
--
I have no idea how many people subscribe to the feed on this blog.

Much of this is also posted over at bigtent.
--
Justice Scalia made an errant comment about privacy online, and has gotten some flack about it.

Here is a clearly intelligent guy who didn't realize how much personal information is available online. Prior to providing his opinion, he should have checked with one of his clerks.

Article from the ABA Journal: http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/fordham_law_class_collects_scalia_info_justice_is_steamed

Good practice - periodically search your user names in a few search engines, not just google. Make sure you can see what is cached, too, as it often will provide some surprising gems.

Look yourself up in the online white pages, pay $20 to see what a base-level back ground check shows about you, and find out how much information about your location is available through sites like zillow.

If you find any information about yourself that could be used to determine your residence, access your credit/financial, etc., the website should prominently display a method of removing that information.

For instance, on the bottom of the msn.whitepages.com, there's a link that says, "Is this you? Remove your listing"

Along the very bottom of the page, or somewhere else easy to find, there should be a link to a privacy page, which has their privacy policy. Information removal instructions may also be located there.

If you do not easily find the instructions for removing this information, contact your Attorney General's office, and let them know about your concerns. http://www.naag.org/.