A woman in Tennessee was recently arrested for poking someone else on Facebook. By doing so, Shannon D. Jackson apparently violated a restraining order that prohibited her from Dana M. Hannah. Violating this so-called “order of protection” is a Class A misdemeanor in the state—meaning the potential maximum sentence is “11 months, 29 days”, or barely below a complete year! All for clicking a link on a social networking website.
Technology and law traditionally haven’t meshed well together, as technology’s constant stream of new developments sometimes make the law’s adherence to the letter ludicrous. Stanford fellow Ryan Calo laid out the …read more

Feel free to debate the ethics and morality of tricking someone into letting you see their Facebook account. In any case, the steps outlined at MakeUseOf.com’s “How to View Private Facebook Profiles” are surprisingly easy to carry out. Since the Facebook peeps are apparently quick to plug any hacks or exploits (according to the how-to’s author), the best way to gain unauthorized access seems to involve tricking people:

Send a message via Facebook to your target, hopefully provoking them into answering. According to Facebook help, answering reply grants the recepient temporary access to your profile. A brief time which will no …read more

Here’s an email I received a couple days ago. Looks like it was mistakenly sent to me:

[censored],
Y’all be careful about what you publish on Facebook during business hours.? [censored] and [censored] are always watching, and I know of one person that has been fired for improper internet use.
Love ya.
[censored] ARM, CAM
[censored]
First Management Services
Oh wow, I originally considered not censoring the names in the email (and the position of the addressee in the salutation. But I’m not someone who relishes sabotaging someone the career of someone else—even if they be a stranger.
But I do wonder: what kind of Facebook activity would …read more

It seems that in Canberra, the capital city of Australia, court notices served through email and text messages are valid. Recently, the Supreme Court approved the use of Facebook to serve people:
Lawyers Meyer Vandenberg, acting for lending company MKM Capital, applied to Master David Harper of the Supreme Court last week to use the popular internet site to serve notice of a judgment on two borrowers who had defaulted on a loan.
Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Kingsley Maxwell Poyser failed to keep up the repayments on $150,000 they borrowed from MKM last year to refinance the mortgage on their Kambah …read more