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If you're reading this, chances are you are probably pretty tech savvy.  Maybe you found this post through a search engine, Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other.  Maybe you read it by clicking a shortened link on Twitter.  Maybe you came across it from a post on Facebook.  Or perhaps it was delivered to you via RSS feed.  All are tech-forward ways to get your fill of your favorite news and blogs.

As you explore new social media and integrate it into your online life, you may acknowledge forces threatening your communications. Unsavory schemes such as phishing, online bait-and-switch, and virtual misrepresentation can make users of social media feel uneasy and distrustful of engaging online.  So what does the social media industry do when its users' personal information is being infiltrated and usurped by spammers?  

It fights back.  And sometimes, it wins.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Not surprisingly, educational institutions possess all sorts of private data with respect to their students. However, a bit more surprising is how easy it is for the privacy of that data to be compromised.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Internet users are subject to all sorts of online advertising. Often, that advertising appears directed to their specific interests and preferences. How does that happen? It occurs because of what has been referred to as behavioral or targeted advertising.

Based on information collected from Internet users relating to their prior browsing and purchasing habits, advertisers seek to customize the Internet experience so that users receive advertising content that reflects their own individual interests.  While this presents some advantages to Internet users, allowing them potentially to receive and view content that may be relevant to them while possibly avoiding irrelevant content, there are some perceived disadvantages.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Maine Seeks To Be The Tail Wagging The Dog

There have been prior efforts to regulate online marketing to children, such as the enactment by Congress of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). But now along comes Maine, with its Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices Against Minors (the Maine Act), as the latest governmental crusader seeking to protect the rights of children against abusive marketing. Is this a positive development, with Maine seeking to be the governmental tail wagging the dog in this arena? Read on.

COPPA, which has been on the books for a decade, demands verifiable parental consent before Web sites may collect personal information from children under the age of 13 years old. The Maine Act, which is scheduled to go into effect next month, goes farther in several respects.

Does Twitter Have Legal Claims for the Hacking and Posting Confidential Company Documents?

In an interesting development for Twitter, French hacker "Hacker Croll" recently compromised confidential information of the Silicon Valley microblogging phenomenon's top executives.  The security breach didn't end there, in fact after the hacker used simple techniques to gain access to the execs' Google accounts, he then retrieved more than 300 private documents stored on Google Docs and emailed the same to various tech news outlets.  TechCrunch, one of the highly-trafficked sites that was emailed, has already started posting some of the documents online.

Did you, like so many others, receive one of those emails informing you that a friend had posted a message or left photos for you at Tagged.com, only to receive an apology from that friend later for inadvertently sending out spam?

Yeah, me too.  It got old pretty quick, and I ended up wanting nothing to do with Tagged.com.

If you're anything like me, then, you greeted the news that New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, is suing the company for "deceptive e-mail marketing practices and invasion of privacy" with a sense of gleeful satisfaction.

The social networking site sent misleading emails to all of the contacts on a new sign-ups email account if the person signing up didn't opt out of that little feature, leading to massive spamming and some embarrassed follow-up emails from new Tagged members.

Tagged's co-founder and chief executive, Greg Tseng, posted an entry in response to Cuomo's announcement stating that when "our company tested a new registration process, we discovered that our 'invite your friends' language was confusing."  However, given Tseng's past involvement in other sites with similar spamming tactics, it's easy to doubt the sincerity of this statement. 

See Also:
Social Net Tagged Getting Sued By NY AG (Washington Post)

A case that could have major implications for websites that accept user-generated content in other countries was supposed to get underway in Italy yesterday, but the unplanned absence of an interpreter meant that the trial was delayed until late September.

The case involves Google's YouTube service, which Italian prosecutors allege violated Italian defamation and privacy laws by not removing a video from its library quickly enough.  The prosecutors have filed charges against four Google executives and are trying them in absentia in Milan. 

A lot has already happened in the email privacy arena this week.  To begin with, members of Congress are starting to make noise about the National Security Agency's interception of domestic emails, according to a report in the New York Times.

A wiretapping law passed by Congress last year allows the NSA to intercept domestic emails as long as the interception was inadvertent and the byproduct of an investigation of individuals "reasonably believed" to be in a foreign country.

Some members of Congress have started to wonder whether the NSA has exploited the loophole in order to systematically read Americans' emails.

The days of the lawless internet are long gone, and we all have cyberlaws that we wish didn't exist or would like to see changed.  Now, one group has come out swinging against internet laws in the works that it sees as counter to the interest of online businesses.

NetChoice, a group supported by AOL, Yahoo, eBay, Oracle and other online companies, has published its iAWFUL (Internet Advocates' Watchlist for Ugly Laws) list of the top ten worst proposed laws affecting ecommerce and open communications. 

The list, which includes mostly state legislation, attacks laws that the group believes "threaten to undermine the foundation of the free and open Internet." 

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section about legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Last week, I told you about how college admissions offices are considering the social networking pages of prospective applicants.  I now am here to report that social networking is not a passing fancy; indeed, the time spent by Americans on social networking sites is increasing dramatically.  And, of course, where people go, the law will follow.

According to a recent report from Nielsen Online, the time that Americans spend on social networking sites is up a staggering 83% from just one year ago.