(title credit goes to a commenter of the article quoted)

Here’s a little story from the Globe.

The more I hear these stories, the more I am reminded of the fact that people are not fully understanding the implications of new technologies quickly enough. This is usually a bad thing, but maybe not in this case where it picks out dishonest people and slams their dishonesty in their face.

The Internet is huge and uncontrolled, and in this day and age, the Internet is also an important and irreplaceable portion of our lives. Inevitably, our personal information - bits and pieces of our lives, will end up on the Internet. And of course, what ends up on the Internet will stay there, especially since there are websites like The Wayback Machine that permanently keep track of the Internet’s history. The only way to prevent anyone from accessing these bits and pieces of our lives is to be flawless in our control of security features like passwords and privacy settings, but of course, nobody is that perfect, and oftentimes the effort of ensuring privacy isn’t really worth the gains, depending on how afraid-of-public you are.

There’s one solution though: Simply live a good and honest life, and do nothing that you’d be ashamed of if it goes public. It’s not that hard. There are many bosses out there who wouldn’t hire people if they see evidences of drug use on facebook accounts - don’t do drugs. There are many opportunities that you may be denied if there are traces of distasteful language used by you - don’t swear excessively and certainly don’t be a bigot. Be honest at all times, and don’t do things that piss off other people whom you don’t want to piss off. Live a good life, and then no matter how open your life becomes, the possibility for backlash should still be low.

Maybe one good thing about these social network websites is their ability to keep people honest and responsible for their own lives.