The world of online social networking opens up enormous opportunities but also some potential threats. As with any social situation there will be pleasant people who you will come accross and others who are no so pleasant, or who are even down right dangerous. Protecting our children online has become a big priority for many parents and even protecting our own identities without becoming an internet hermit. It is now a question which is regularly raised in legal circles as the to the limits and extent to which the law applies in the online social networking space. In many quarters, the consensus appears to be that on-line media is no different from a phone call, a mobile phone text message, a radio signal or a television broadcast in that the senders of such messages must be sensitive to how these messages will be viewed and interpreted by audiences who are sometimes not intending to view material or are naive to the extent as which dangerous material can be damaging. Then there is also the issue of how to deal with communication which is intentional spiteful and designed to cause harm either directly or through the mechanism of reputation.

It is now a regular occurrence that people are caught in compromising situations and then this information is posted on a social networking site like facebook or twitter or myspace. Getting posted on these site when you are not consenting is potentially very harmful to your reputation. What if your employer saw these photos or your close friends or family? It can be a very difficult situation to be in. There are some protections which the law offers to people to prevent deliberate and malicious harm to the reputation of another. This is known as the law of defamation which generally prevents this type of publication from occurring. We have defamation specialists available who can look into a defamation issue with you and indentify if you may have a claim of defamation available to you if someone has done some serious damage to your reputation.