Recently, a livejournal user by the name of Jason Fortuny posted a deviant personal ad on craigslist with the malicious intent of luring in the personal information of interested men. After recieving hundreds of responses, he then posted their information and pictures for all to see (NSFW).

Indeed, what Jason did was entirely unethical and most likely illegal in the state of Washington. But, he did drive home the point that people are very vulnerable to privacy leaks on craigslist, where fraudulent posters abound. More importantly, he revealed how easy it is to get people to part with their personal information–addresses, full names, and phone numbers. Some of the victims included cheating husbands, religious men, and community leaders. All of their graphic pictures and information are now laid bare.

As the avenues for online publishing and replying get easier, we all have to remember one thing: common sense. Who knows how many craigslist personal postings are legitimate? And, even if they are legit, I wouldn’t even think about sending personal information until the other person had my trust.

I’ve also heard about thieves breaking into houses that had listed valuable items for sale on craigslist. Many times, the postings even revealed when the poster would not be at home. Things like this pretty much hand those high definition TVs over to the thugs.

The botton line is that you should treat the streets of the internet the same as the streets in the real world. With the online explosion of social media and user interaction comes the responsibility of the masses to keep their own identities and information secure.

One of my favorite places to find addicting games is at digggames, which aggregates flash games that have made it to the front page of Digg. With Digg’s current interface, it can be difficult to distill these kinds of genres from previous posts. Thus, digggames was really doing a service by filtering out Digg’s content for a niche market. Recently, they were served a cease a desist letter (page 1 and 2) from Digg claiming that they were infringing on Digg’s trademarks.

But, why not stop there? If Digg is going to go after digggames, why don’t they also go after 80% of the sites on the digg tools list? Sites like Diggdot.us, DiggLicious, and Digg vs Dot would also be ripe for a takedown. At the extreme end, mashups would all be considered illegal, squashing all the creative juices that have made web 2.0 innovative and liberating.

Certainly, Digg has the right to enforce its trademarks. But, taking down digggames, a small homebrewed site that isn’t meant to compete with Digg, takes points off of my book for Digg.