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"Computer scientists and policy experts say that ... innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person's identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number."

This article by Noam Cohen describes the controversy over the use of public photos on flickr. Flickr is a website used to share images with family and friends, which is now being used by company's and site's selling images without the approval of their owners. One example was Virgin Mobile's use of a picture of Alison Chang, a 15 year old, in one of their campaigns without her knowledge. The picture was under the protection of a creative commons that allowed it to be used for commercial use, making this issue more about privacy than about copyright. Virgin Mobile responded that they were "promoting creative freedom and didn't do anything wrong."

MySpace takes the safety and privacy of all MySpace users very seriously and, in some situations, we ask for a salute to verify the identity of a user. A salute is a digital image of you holding a sign with MySpace.com and your Friend ID number written on the sign.

A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. 

But this new twist on advertising has already proved to be tricky. Users do not always realize that the links and "likes" they post on Facebook can be deployed for marketing purposes.

Few consumers have ever heard of Acxiom. But analysts say it has amassed the world's largest commercial database on consumers - and that it wants to know much, much more.

Facebook announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

Bozeman City, Montana now asks all applicants for jobs to 'Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,' the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

"A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer's insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook. [Her insurer] confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients."