Privacy, Police and Profiles

Click here to read: Social Ads Or Social Networking Nightmare?

. . . the goods that people buy, the plans they make, the networks they belong to, paint a near-complete portrait of their lives. The information that's useful to a marketer may be even more useful to a criminal or a cop. The young people who form a large share of Facebook's usership may not be overly sensitive to privacy concerns, but they surely understand this basic fact.

Or do they?

Read on... Cops aim to remove walls between Web, offline patrols

Police Lt. Charles Cohen, an Indiana state trooper, teaches other law enforcement officials how to patrol virtual worlds, online social networks, chat rooms and the like to spot real world crime.

People under 25 tend to think about what is public versus private information differently from the rest of us, and that is great for law enforcement investigators. . .

So, before you post that photograph of the 6-foot-high marijuana plant decorated as a Christmas tree, think about it.

Something my son found out was that your girlfriend's parents can find your MySpace profile as easily as your friends. Privacy is wide open on social networks. If you see that your profile is being targeted for drug rehab advertisements, you may want to consider this: principals, parents and police also may be viewing your page.

In San Marcos, we have a police officer who has the acronyms and attitudes to pose as a teenager looking for excitement on chat rooms. Many adult predators who thought they were meeting a teenage girl or boy for a little sexual healing are now spending their time as sex slaves for a big guy named "Bubba" in a Texas prison.

Be safe out there.