Popular social networking sites.
The explosion in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Bebo, Habbo, Friendster and QQ has taken the internet by storm. Hundreds of millions of subscribers (literally hundreds of millions) are signing up for these services and proving vast amounts of personal information about their lives, friends, families, photos. They tweet and update about all that is important to them. Limited privacy controls in many social networks, combined with the tendency of many to overshare, has created incredibly detailed profiles of each social network user and their network of contacts.
While most of these service providers are fine, upstanding companies, some may not be. How long will it be before a transnational criminal organization surreptitiously launches its own social networking site for the purposes of furthering their illegal enterprise? Each day new criminal cases emerge wherein the contents of social networks are being used for criminal and civil legal proceedings.
There is no turning back the Web 2.0/Social Network revolution. As such, law enforcement organizations around the world are finding out and investigating the myriad new forms of criminality enabled via social networks.
