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And other social networking sites as the Pentagon weighed a similar prohibition over cybersecurity concerns. The Marines had already banned the use of social media on military networks but issued a more detailed order this week defining which sites were out of bounds and noting possible exceptions to the rule, a Marine Corps spokesman, Lieutenant Craig Thomas said. "These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," the Marine Corps said in an order posted on its website. "The...

The U.S. Marines have banned Twitter and Facebook. That the Marines have banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and various other social networking sites comes in an article from Wired magazine. The Marines banned Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as part of a move to protect their systems and personnel, and further keep themselves protected from online influences. The ban isn't limited to just those sites, but many social media and social networking web-sites. The Marines' ban will last at least one year, and has been drawn up as a response to the ever growing concern that these sites can be a dangerous...

Websites such as Facebook and MySpace encourage teenagers to view friendship as a "commodity" and are leading them to suicide, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has warned. Archbishop Vincent Nichols said the sites are leading teenagers to build "transient relationships" which leave them unable to cope when their social networks collapse. He said the internet and mobile phones were "dehumanising" community life. His comments follow the death of 15-year-old schoolgirl who took a fatal overdose of painkillers last week after being bullied on Bebo, another networking site. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the...

Speaking at this week’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York, boyd said that even among people with access to the Net, long-held social divisions of race, class, and income are starting to play out online, particularly among teens now starting to choose which social network they prefer, MySpace or Facebook. “Social media don’t eradicate social divisions,” says boyd, an expert in NextGen behaviors for Microsoft and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “[Social media are] making the old social divisions obvious in totally new ways.”

A couple of days ago I discovered that when I clicked on MY PROFILE , somebody else's profile which hasn't been accessed in 4 year appears . There is no problem with my HOME page , and all my info / pic links / etc are still in EDIT PROFILE . I contacted MYSPACE but have not heard back from them as yet . Anybody got an idea as to what happened or what I can do about it ?

A Los Angeles federal judge has tentatively thrown out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who ended up committing suicide. In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge George Wu has acquitted Lori Drew of misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization. Wu says his ruling will become final when he issues it in writing. Drew was convicted in a trial, but the judge says that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MySpace, the social network owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said it will cut 30 percent of its staff to lower costs as it struggles to stay popular in the face of rising competition. MySpace will be left with about 1,000 employees, it said in a statement released on Tuesday. The company declined to say how many people work at the service, but the percentage suggests that about 400 people will lose their jobs. The cuts, which were presaged in several blog reports in recent weeks, are the biggest move so far by new management at...

As employers make Google searches a routine part of the hiring process, college newspapers are seeing an increase in the number of alumni looking to have their names removed from articles they wrote or were quoted in during their college years. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a growing number of papers are being drawn into controversy about whether to grant alumni requests to rewrite a paper's historical record because certain articles or comments could make finding a job difficult or because they could create difficulties and conflicts of interest in the future. The trend is just one of...

A man who rode his bicycle 180 miles to have sex with a Scranton teen he met on the Internet will serve one to four years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday. William Wagner, 26, 414 Battery Drive, Havre de Grace, Md., met the 15-year-old girl through the social networking Web site MySpace. In June, he biked to Scranton to meet the teen. In February, Mr. Wagner pleaded guilty to unlawful contact with a minor. He slept at Pine Brook baseball field, Sanderson Avenue and Green Place, while he was in Scranton. He took the teen to the baseball field...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Militants and hate groups increasingly use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube as propaganda tools to recruit new members, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The report released on Wednesday noted a 25 percent rise in the past year in the number of "problematic" social networking groups on the Internet. The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism." "Every aspect of the Internet is...

London, England (CNS) - Britain's Prince Charles is opening a MySpace account. The 60-year-old royal has turned to the social networking site to warn young people about the dangers of deforestation and climate change.His page is expected to explain why it is vital to preserve rain forests and how cutting down trees emits more carbon in a year than all the cars, planes, boats and trucks in the world.Speaking about his decision to take his eco-crusade online, Charles said: "One of the internet's strengths is that it can enable diverse communities to come together to ensure that everybody's views and...

The most tech savvy administration ever. The White House is now using communication methods that are popular amongst 7th grade girls and sexual predators. We wrote earlier this week about the White House's new Flickr photo account, now consider that the White House now has account on My Space, Twitter, and Facebook. How well is this "communication tool" working? Here's some comments I found from people at the White House's My Space page: "thanx for the add! if you dont mind my sayin so chief i think we ought to legalize marijuana, it would deflate the drug cartels, including the...

Hulu is getting new content and cash from Disney, giving it an impressive line-up of broadcast TV content for its online video site. This announcement comes barely a week after Google’s YouTube video site announced partnership deals with a slew of movie and television studios, including Lion’s Gate and Starz. The deal is a significant boost to Hulu as it seeks to leapfrog Fox Interactive, which owns MySpace, for the second spot in viewership behind YouTube, and could eventually help it overtake the overall market leader. But it still has quite a way to go before that happens.Chris Dale, a...

SNIPPET: "Seems the FBI was concerned about threats - which included a pledge to turn a tax protest into a blood bath - allegedly made by a Twitter user identified as CitizenQuasar. The FBI arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, 52. Hayden’s penultimate tweet at 12:49 AM on April 15 returned to the subject of his martyrdom. “Locked AND loaded for the Oklahoma State Capitol. Let’s see what happens.” The FBI arrested (.pdf) him at his home later that day, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oklahoma City, which otherwise declined to comment on the case."

LONDON: Fresh research has confirmed what many parents and teachers already feared: social networking sites are damaging students’ academic performance. The researchers discovered that the majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade compared with those who shun the site. In order to reach their conclusion, researchers discovered how students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work. “Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying,” the...

A UNIVERSITY is offering a master's degree in Facebook, MySpace and Twitter but it will cost students more than $9000. For £4400 (49075) Birmingham City University in the UK will teach students how to blog, set up podcasts and make the most of the social media websites for marketing. "It's not for freaks or IT geeks. The tools learned on this course will be accessible to many people," convenor Jon Hickman told The Daily Mail. "It will definitely appeal to students looking to go into professions including journalism and PR." But sudent Jamie Waterman, said it would be a waste...

SNIPPET: "Millions are participating in online social networks in an age of unprecedented self-surveillance (sousveillance). And these sites are pushing criminal investigation into uncharted waters. Two of the most popular networking sites are MySpace and Facebook, each of which boasts over 100 million users."

... A few weeks ago, he posted a description of his mood on a MySpace account. “Devious,” he wrote. The next day, a man accused of carrying a loaded gun would go on trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn — and in large part, the case rested on the credibility of Vaughan Ettienne, bodybuilder, Internet user and arresting officer. ...

GwdToday.com is reporting that 37-year-old Angel Simmons Lindle was arrested Friday and charged with second degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

Each year, the number of young Internet users continues to grow, as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace become more popular and information for school and research are more accessible. But if parents aren't careful, the Internet can also be a threat to children.