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Justin and I have been focusing a lot on what I like to call “Facebook Faux Pas” – or, in general, unwise practices on social networking, social media, and microblogging sites.  A new site has been receiving a lot of attention lately – PleaseRobMe.com.  Check it out at your convenience.  Basically, it runs a simple script on Twitter.com to identify and aggregate posts pushed through from one geosocial networking site (Foursquare.com) where users have “checked in” or otherwise updated their current location through their mobile device’s GPS functionality.  Individuals, of course, post these updates to quickly and conveniently inform their friends as to where they are, or where they are going to be.  Obviously, though, revealing of one’s location (or one’s absence from home) may increase the risk of personal victimization or property theft – or both.

When giving talks to youth, I share plenty of real-world examples of how teenagers and young adults unwittingly allow a dossier of contact information to be collected about them through the connecting of their candid posts and messages online.  To note, we’ve actively researched this happening on social networking sites in papers here and here.  To be sure, our research has found that youth overall are becoming more discerning and protective with the contact information they share, but our studies have not included microblogging sites and the content of status updates.  If that is the case, those intent on bullying, abusing, or otherwise harming others have an increasing (or at least steady) amount of access to a meaningful number of potential victims based on those victims’ participation within cyberspace.  In criminology, we have a subfield termed “victimology” that focuses in on how individuals contribute to their own victimization through negligence, precipitation, or provocation.  It seems very applicable as a paradigmatic lens through which to view all of this.

It is remarkable to think how far we have come in such a short period of time as it relates to our level of comfort in sharing personal information online.  Ten years ago, individuals were concerned with sharing their primary email address for fear of spam (and usually had a secondary email address which they more often used across the Web).  Posting one’s first and last name back then was a rarity, as anonymity and pseudonymity were more commonly preferred and adopted.  Now, because of Facebook and similar sites, most of us seem tremendously comfortable using our full name in cyberspace – and posting so much more about who, what, when, why, and where we are.  Youth who have grown up with these technologies are even more inclined towards full disclosure, and so we have GOT to get them thinking about what they type, send, and post before their actions inadvertently invite harm.

Justin and I study and work to reduce various forms of deviance and crime on social networking sites, and this recent article on CNN.com prompted me to talk about some of the issues therein.

The main thrust of the story is that cybercriminals are now using Facebook and Twitter to victimize unsuspecting individuals through “phishing” techniques, where targets click on a link and are taken to a site that convinces them to reveal personal information.  This parallels the phenomenon of email phishing, where people receive what appears to be legitimate communication from their bank, cable Internet company, or an e-commerce site like eBay asking them to follow a link to fix a time-critical password/account/payment problem by typing in their private data.

The criminal usage of these links (and the convincing content that surrounds them) can be characterized as social engineering, which often involves some amount of emotional pressure to lead an individual to make a quick online decision based on invalid or unvalidated information.  Undergirding these schemes is the promotion of urgency – basically saying that if you don’t click on this link and do the needful immediately, you’ll lose online access, or your reputation may be damaged, or you’ll suffer from other serious consequences.

The bottom line is that we need to make sure that we cautiously evaluate the legitimacy of the sites we visit from links within Facebook and Twitter.  If you think you might actually have a password/account/payment problem on a site, go to that site directly (i.e., type the URL into your browser’s address bar) rather than clicking on a link to get there.  Secondly, use your browser’s (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera) built-in anti-phishing features to verify the legitimacy of sites that you visit (whether directly linked from a social networking or microblogging site, or accessed another way).

Web 2.0 sites have provided us with many benefits, but are now being exploited to perpetrate identity theft and fraud.  Carefully think about what you’re doing – and the validity of the information being presented to you – as you follow links across the WWW from these online environments.

Sysomos released a report in June describing the “explosive growth” of twitter over the past several months.  We’ve certainly seen an increase in tweeting in popular culture, but are adolescents jumping on board?  Our conversations with teens suggest no.  And a recent account from one particular teen about his peers’ views of twitter also reaffirms this perspective.

Data we recently collected from 12-17 year-olds also suggests that teens are not quickly moving to twitter.  Less than 8% of youth in two different samples from two different school districts (one very large and the other moderately-sized) say they used twitter in the previous week.  This is inconsistent with the Sysomos report which claims that 31% of twitter users are between the ages of 15 and 19.  Or it suggests that it is really 18 and 19 year-olds that are driving the numbers in this category.  It is also important to recognize that Sysomos numbers are based on “self-disclosed” age, and according to the report “only 0.7% of users disclosed their age.”

What are your thoughts?  Are the kids in your life tweeting?  Are you a regular user of twitter?

For those of you who are regular visitors to the site, you may have noticed some changes over the last week or so.  Sameer and I have been working hard to add and update information on the site to make it even more useful for you all.  For example, we’ve added a few videos to our new YouTube channel and have begun posting updates through our Twitter Feed.  The biggest change you will notice is that we are now the “Cyberbullying Research Center.”  We have been working on this project for quite a while now, and believe this will allow us to do more of the research we feel is critical to better understanding this important problem.

We will continue to roll out more features and resources over the next couple of months, so definitely stop by often.  We are poring over new data from two school districts and hope to have summary fact sheets up soon.  I can tell you that initial results suggest that recent prevalence rates appear to be similar to our earlier work (about 8-9% of students have experienced cyberbullying in the previous 30 days), though the environments in which cyberbullying is occurring is changing (more on social networking sites and YouTube).  Follow us on Twitter for more snippets of findings as we work our way through the data, and check out our new video clips on YouTube.