Social Network scandals

In the 21st century, many websites are created in order to facilitate our daily live among them are social network sites such as myspace, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc and commercial sites such as ebay, amazon, or craigslist. These sites purpose is to help us with easy access to what we need whether to socialize or to purchase things at a better price. These website however have negative aspect to them as people with the wrong intension can used them to their advantage and if one isn’t careful can be a victim through those social network sites.
Social networking sites are easy to use. One just has to sign up to create and account and then begin to socialize whether by adding someone you know as you friend or search for people whether by name, group, or interests. Communication is possible for no matter where the person is in the world. On your account, you can put self pictures or pictures or things of interest, in order to create a profile that tell others a bit about yourself. In a nutshell that is how these site works. In general, when you join one of these social networks, you hope to keep in touch with your friends, make new friends through other ones, or meet brand new people all over the country or world.
These sites however can be misused by people who will try to gain advantage of other people. In the past years many scandals have occurred through these sites. For example: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html
This link is about a 13 year old girl that committed suicide because an alleged boy who was talking to her told her she was cruel. Later, the ‘boy’ turned out to be a former friend of the girl who played a crude joke on her.
http://www.wisn.com/news/18641625/detail.html
This link is about an 18 year old male using facebook to blackmail student from a high school into having sex with him by posing as a female. There are many other scandals that happened through the access of social networking sites some like stalking, fraud, and rape. There are people who either lie about themselves on their profile or pretend to be complete different person in order to fool people.
Commercial sites like ebay amazon and craigslist have scandals too. Many people sell things through these site and some sellers are honest and some aren’t. Many frauds occurred on these sites whether by the sellers or buyers.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328878,00.html
This link is about frauds that occurred in Romania and how people are scamming others mainly Americans. Ebay is trying to have law enforcement to crack down the frauds.
Craigslist is a very popular commercial site. One can use craigslist for many purposes such as job search or advertise a job position, buy or sell items, give away free items, even find a date. Craigslist has had many scandals that occurred whether through fraud, prostitution, rape, or murder. While I was in Maryland, one of the lawyers I worked for on my internship worked on a human trafficking case where the offenders used craigslist. Here are 2 craigslist scandals that occurred recently.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/25/2009-03-25_violent_sex_ad_led_to_murder_of_wabc_new.html
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/04/boston_police_have_craigslist.php

In conclusion, social networking site are great tool to communicate among friends and a great way to interact with people all over the world. I have communicated with people in Australia, United Kingdom, etc and that wouldn’t have been possible without social networking. However, these site are open to anyone who knows how to use a computer. There are many people who targets young teenagers and use social network sight to prey on them. These networks need to be used with caution and one can’t be too trustworthy. There are privacy settings to help secure one’s account etc. The point is socialize cautiously and be very careful when meeting someone off them.