Photos From Social Networking Sites Come Back And Haunt Defendants

[tropicsgoddess]

There are a few separate drunk-driving cases where the defendants have profiles on MySpace, Facebook and such where embarrassing photos of them are posted and have cast doubt on their character in the eyes of the court.
My take is that there is some responsibility on the defendant for things of that nature. If you have a profile online for any site, be careful about what you post. Make your profile private to those who are not on your friends list, and delete anything that is incriminating!! You never know who could be looking at your page and what their intentions are.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business...,2403445.story

[Greenday]

People posting pictures of themselves doing tons of partying is making it a crapload harder for them to get jobs (not that I care). Lots of employers are using facebook and myspace to look up future employees to see what kind of people they are. It's genius in my opinion.

Honestly, it's not hard to hide stuff on facebook. I have my profile set so only my friends can view my profile at all. If you aren't my friend, you can't see ANYTHING. That, and I'm not dumb enough to post stuff.

[Boozy]

You should also be careful about who you add as friends. Many people will see something like "Sarah Smith has sent you a friend request" and add her. They can't quite place the name, but everyone knew a Sarah at some point in their lives, maybe "Smith" is her married name, and what the heck, why not?

The problem is that you've now opened up your private profile to a complete stranger. They've got your contact and workplace information, access to your pictures, status updates as to your whereabouts, and a list of your friends.

My husband uses this investigative technique regularly, and has found it works about 80% of the time. It's the quickest way to get a list of associates.

[Slytovhand]

Hmmm - I just read the article, and I had 2 thoughts.

One - I wonder if said defendents will now sue whomever put up the photos (if it wasn't on their own personal site - but on a friend's site if it linked..) and who knows, maybe even sue whoever took the photo (lible, slander, defamation of character - all that sort of stuff...).

Secondly - humans, when they face a bad situation, need to help deal with it somehow, and usually humour (often in the form of mockery) is sometimes an important aspect of that.

Obviously - if someone is trying to say that they are a tea-totaller, who only has a drink every now and then, and then accidentally kills someone "because they weren't aware of just how drunk they were - as it hit them so much", but their site has them going out every weekend getting trashed...yeah - you're stuffed!!

But just because someone needs a way to not feel as depressed as they may have been for the last few weeks or months after something serious, and have that used against them (say, mates taking someone out to show them a good time...)... that's somewhat out of context, and 'shouldn't' be used against them...

[Greenday]

As for suing, well, you'd never win for facebook pictures. You can untag pictures of yourself and you won't be linked to them at all. So it's your own fault for leaving them up to get caught.

I do agree though, it would be unfair if it's for someone who rarely drinks.

[powerboy]

I have my profile set to private. And I am very careful as who I am friends with

[iradney]

I don't really have incriminating photos. There's a photo of me making a fishface...but that's about it. Nevertheless, my profile is still set to private. Not that it means anything, Facebook apparently can do what it wants with the stuff you upload to it:
http://blog.mattling.com/2008/07/terms-of-service.html

(Taken from above link

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