Recently the town I went to school in as a child has seen a Spotted page arise and within a few days the page itself has thousands of likes and is updated regularly. Like Foucault's metaphor of the Panopticon, the page acts as a high place looking down upon the people casting judgement hither and thither from the position of power that anonymity brings.
Whilst yet to make the big headlines, the full picture of online crime represents a fundamental challenge to all businesses, governments and our daily lives. In the all-encompassing digital age, information security as a profession and as a way of life is vital to ensuring both our economic prosperity and our sense of safety, privacy and freedom.
As this area of communication continues to develop we will continue to see news stories where you can't help but wonder how someone could have been so naive'? Yet, employers must also make sure that they don't end up on the wrong end of a tribunal decision (or the media) by taking a decision that could ultimately be considered unreasonable or disproportionate.
Following the Boston bombings, anyone following the relevant feeds and hashtags would have seen a surge of contradictory stories and speculation, some important and true, others later exposed as nonsense. Twitter is both an enormous rumour mill, and invaluable source of valuable information. I could end this article here, but academics have been studying this question in detail since at least 2010, so I'm about to get a little technical.