In a disturbing new trend, two landmark cases are challenging the right to the privacy of blogs and content on social networking sites – even when personal sites are set to private. In both cases, the corporations believe that there is information on these Web pages that could lead to relevant evidence.

Summary

The first story, Victim's MySpace page subpoenaed in lawsuit, is a case where a young woman’s car was hit by an oncoming car that swerved across the median. She was not at fault, and sustained terrible and permanent injuries. Her family believes she incurred these in part due to flaws in the design of her Dodge Spirit, so they have sued Chrysler for damages.

Chrysler denies the family’s claim and in response has requested a court order to access to the young woman's MySpace account. The young woman, who cannot talk or take care of herself, had written in her blog that she had smoked pot in the past. (Both she and the driver who hit her car were not under the influence of any substance at the time of the crash.)

In the second story, MySpace, Facebook Pages Called Key to Dispute Over Insurance Coverage for Eating Disorders, the insurance company, Horizon Blue Shield, has denied health benefits for minors with bulimia and anorexia pending clarification as to whether the disorders are biologically based or have emotional causes. The insurance company is only responsible to pay if the illness has a biological basis.

To determine if there are grounds to pay, Horizon wants access to the e-mail messages, blogs, and any other writing about their eating disorders that was shared with others, including entries on such Web sites as Facebook or MySpace. Horizon has succeeded in obtaining a court order

Things to think about

The first concern is whether information written in blogs, e-mail messages, Web pages, and the like, will be treated as fact. Teens are mercurial, trying on many attitudes, joking around, deliberately answering surveys in sarcastic ways, even lying outright to sound cooler to their friends, etc. Are these to be taken as fact? It is particularly concerning that Chrysler has subpoenaed the records of the young crash victim who cannot even speak to explain, interpret, or defend her online content.

The second concern is that this information, which even five years ago would have been an oral "history" -- transitory conversation, notes on shards of paper, and so on -- is now a written history. Not only is it written, but it is more permanent than most people know.

Take Facebook, for example. If these court cases compel you to try to remove content from Facebook as insurance against finding yourself in a similar situation, you’ll be hard pressed to erase it because the site makes this very difficult. (My blog, The Fine Print – Do You Know the Terms You (Or Your Child) Agreed To?, will give you a glimpse of the legal underpinnings of the claims social networking sites lay to your material.)

We live with the luxury of information at our fingertips, but we need to distinguish sharply between information for general public consumption and personal information. When the quest for information infringes on consumer rights to manage, control access to, and protect their information, we’ve gone too far.

Linda