Cops Use Facebook to Bust Underage Drinkers

Racy pics, suicide threats get would-be cops dumped

(NEWSER) - Law enforcement agencies are probing potential recruits’ digital lives for information that might make them unfit for the job, USA Today reports. More than a third of police agencies look into applicants’ social media presence, says a new report conducted for police executives. Reviewing postings to sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, some agencies require applicants’ online passwords, or want to see their text-messaging and email records. More»

Said reporter posing as girl harassed by men

(NEWSER) - Posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook, a Daily Mail reporter was bombarded by messages from 20- to 40-year-old men wanting "to perform a sex act"—only it was really another social networking site, and Facebook is livid and threatening to sue over the misreported story . The author of the item, which appeared yesterday, said he was on another site and that editors added the mention against his wishes. Fine, says Facebook, but the paper was slow to respond and the damage is done. More»

Bloggers alerted law enforcement to potential danger

(NEWSER) - The Secret Service is looking into a Facebook poll that asked users to weigh in on whether the president should be killed. “We are taking the appropriate investigative steps,” said a rep for the agency. The poll, which has already been taken down, offered four possible answers to the question "should obama be killed?": “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” and, perhaps most tellingly, “If he cuts my health care,” Plum Line reports. More»

Company analyzing data for MySpace says of 90K booted, minimum 8K back online

(NEWSER) - MySpace grabbed headlines today when it announced that it had kicked 90,000 registered sex offenders off the site over the past 2 years. Where did they all go? Many went to Facebook, says Sentinel, the security firm that roots out such offenders for MySpace. “We found over 8,000 offenders on their site without much effort,” the CEO told TechCrunch. More»

(NEWSER) - A 25-year-old Chicago stockbroker was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison for soliciting sex from minors on Facebook, the Tribune reports. Facebook said this appears to be the first case of a sexual predator using the social networking site. Michael Macalindong posed as a girl to lure a teenage boy, and then blackmailed the teen with video of their encounters. More»