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Privacy Social Networks The Courts Your Rights Online

Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers 494

crimeandpunishment writes "A lot of Facebook users going through divorces have learned a very costly lesson about their privacy settings. In fact, for many of them their Facebook pages helped lead to the divorce in the first place. More than 80% of the members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers say they've used or run into evidence gathered from Facebook and other social networking sites over the last five years — and some of them have some very entertaining stories to tell. 'Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama,' said AAML's president."
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Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers

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  • by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:09AM (#32728860)

    ...attorneys are not interested into people posting on Slashdot. Can you guess why ?!?

  • Rule 1. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dexter Herbivore ( 1322345 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:10AM (#32728866) Journal
    Rule 1. of the internet, if you want it private... DON'T post it.
    • Better: If you EVER MIGHT want it private, don't post it on the internet.
      • Re:Rule 1. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:23AM (#32728978)
        Which effectively means, don't post anything on the Internet. You never know when something that seems innocent might some day be something you would have preferred to keep private.
        • Re:Rule 1. (Score:5, Funny)

          by phoenixwade ( 997892 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:38AM (#32729118)

          Which effectively means, don't post anything on the Internet. You never know when something that seems innocent might some day be something you would have preferred to keep private.

          That, There, is the definition of Irony!

        • Why, you seem like someone who has something to hide Mr, betterunixthanunix....

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          Got it. No C++ on the Internet. Someone might see my privates.
        • That's what I was implying. There is also anonymity, but only for certain values of anonymous - if you post something that attracts the interest of the authorities you probably won't stay anonymous for long.
        • No. That in itself is suspect.

          Post something. Your name, DoB, rough location, a photo, a few of your friends, then never touch it again. You have an online presence, it is your only one, and it's accurate. That way you have a layer of defense if something like this turns up. "No, that's not my account. This is my account, and I can prove it because my friends are on it, not on the one you found. You didn't find this profile because I don't use it except to stop people using my identity fraudulently.

          (Note:
  • From the article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dexter Herbivore ( 1322345 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:12AM (#32728892) Journal
    "Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him."

    WTF? What kind of @sshole is he? Oh, wait... my ex effectively did that with my daughter pre-facebook...

    • by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:45AM (#32729182)

      Oh, wait... my ex effectively did that with my daughter pre-facebook...

      Wait a minute... people were @sshole's _before_ facebook existed? Surely you jest?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hedwards ( 940851 )
        Aye 'tis true, FB just amplified the assholish dickishness of people. Well, that and the unsubstantiated belief that people actually care about such stupid trivialities. Then Twitter came in and went even further with people tweeting about their bowel movements.
    • by bsDaemon ( 87307 )

      I live in VA, and I believe you can still sue/divorce your wife here under "alienation of affection" if she withholds sex from you. That seriously has to be the most stupid grounds for anything I've ever heard... unless she tries to take the dog. That's just low. P.S. -- I have never been married. I'm not nearly as old as a 5-digit ID would make me seem.

  • by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:16AM (#32728912)

    People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.

    FaceBook does not cause divorces. Divorce lawyers don't cause divorces.

    Cheaters who get caught and don't change their behavior cause divorces.

    If you promised someone your fidelity, and if you have broken that promise, look in the mirror to see whom to blame.

    I can't stand hypocrites who don't take responsibility for their actions.

    And cheaters.

    Ehud
    Tucson AZ
    P.S. Please don't mod me down. It's my birthday this year.

    • What about the cheaters who get divorced in order to marry their other lover? Is their partner on the hook for that?

      As a rule though, documenting infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid, whether we're talking a bunch of emails, a compromising video, or a credit card charge at a hotel. Facebook is no different.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by halcyon1234 ( 834388 )

        What about the cheaters who get divorced in order to marry their other lover?

        If that's the type of person they're going after, they'll quickly discover what it's like to be on the "cheated" side.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        As a rule though, documenting infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid, whether we're talking a bunch of emails, a compromising video, or a credit card charge at a hotel. Facebook is no different.

        Well unless you have in-person contact with your lover in your day to day life, that can be a little hard -- how else will you arrange meetings and whatnot? The communication will need to happen at some point.

        If I were in such a situation, I would immediately look at steganography. Cryptography is a good first try, but the problem is that it reveals who you were communicating with, which is incriminating in and of itself. Thus, steganography, possibly using some public photo sharing service (ironica

        • by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:58AM (#32729332) Homepage Journal

          Well unless you have in-person contact with your lover in your day to day life, that can be a little hard -- how else will you arrange meetings and whatnot? The communication will need to happen at some point.

          Are you fishing for tips or are you wrong on /. ?

          Web-Mail account, registered solely for this purpose. Browser in privacy mode when you access it. You don't need crypto to keep something hidden, you need crypto if you want to keep something secret that you can't hide.

          For the experts, or those with much to lose, there are lots of other options, but unless your spouse is a geek, they're overkill.

          Disclosure: I worked on some of this stuff many years ago. Our target audience were civil rights activists who in many countries likewise need to communicate with at least plausible deniability. A geeky UN-affiliated NGO built systems where the local military police could confiscate their computers and find absolutely nothing incriminating.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by afidel ( 530433 )
          It's called a Tracphone.
      • by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:40AM (#32729146)

        As a rule though, infidelity anywhere is just plain stupid,

        FTFY

        • by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:51AM (#32729258) Homepage Journal

          Actually, it is not.

          It may violate your ethics, moral guidelines, religion or what-have-you. But it is not stupid. On the contrary, successful cheating does require considerable mental ressources, especially if you want to keep the affair going (and secret) for a long time.

          It is also a built-in drive, the same way that hunger and thirst are. Look up Helen E. Fisher and read a few of her books, she is the foremost authority on the biology that drives lust, love and attachment. Here's a great TED talk of hers on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html [ted.com]

          • by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:14AM (#32729542)

            It may violate your ethics, moral guidelines, religion or what-have-you. But it is not stupid.

            Cheating is not about ethics or morals or religion. It's not even about sex. Its about your commitment (or lack thereof) to your spouse, and to all of the other people in your marriage (kids, in-laws, parents, neighbors, etc.). And if you are not smart enough to find an acceptable outlet for your biological urges, I would have to say that's pretty stupid.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Tom ( 822 )

              Cheating is not about ethics or morals or religion. It's not even about sex. Its about your commitment (or lack thereof) to your spouse,

              So it says that if I put my penis in a vagina that is not attached to my wife, that somehow magically influences my commitment to my wife - but at the same time, it's not about sex?

              Sorry, that is very hard to parse.

              So what exactly is commitment? And how exactly does it get impaired by sleeping with someone else? I'm not trolling. It simply doesn't make sense unless you see a causal connection that is not automatically a given. Imagine the borderline case of a simple one-night-stand during a business trip. N

              • by radtea ( 464814 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @10:41AM (#32731838)

                So what exactly is commitment?

                "Commitment" is one of those code-words people use, like "morality" or "good". In each case they implicitly attach a very specific, concrete meaning to a very abstract term, and for the most part are unable to grasp that anyone else might have a different concrete instantiation of that term.

                In the case of "commitment" they generally mean "commitment to not have sex with anyone else." Sexual monogamy is so deeply embedded in people's heads that they can't conceive of a notion of "commitment" that doesn't include it. They also, as other posters have pointed out, identify sex with love, and sexual fidelity with "true love".

                In fact, those of us who have discovered true love know that sexual fidelity has nothing to do with it, and may even be opposed to it. Being in an open relationship only works if your love for each other is absolute, because only then do you trust each other to go have fun however you please, secure in the knowledge that at the end of the day (or night) you'll come back together, in no small part because the sex is so much better with someone you genuinely love (and even moreso when it's not the only meal on the menu...)

                I think for many couples sexual fidelity involves a kind of reversal of cause and effect. People in open relationships stay together because they want to be together, and their love is not threatened by the involvment of others. Many people in closed relationships try to emulate that by creating artificial boundaries against anything that might tempt them to leave. But people who genuinely love each other don't need those boundaries or artificial constraints.

                In my mind the "open" in "open relationship" means more than just being free to have sex with other people: it also means a commitment to be open with each other about who you are, what you want and what (or who) you're doing. That "commitment to openness" is what I mean by commitment, the exact opposite of the "commitment to closedness"--in every respect--that so many people seem to mean by it.

      • by silentcoder ( 1241496 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:48AM (#32730030)

        >What about the cheaters who get divorced in order to marry their other lover? Is their partner on the hook for that?

        Sometimes.

        There is no real universal here. Imagine X and Y are married. X is abusive. Y meets the very cute Z and sees just how different things can be with somebody who actually respects and cares for you. X lashes out once more one night, Y jumps in the car and drives off to seek comfort with friend Z. Holding each other, crying and consoling and maybe having alcohol- one thing leads to another and Y sleeps with Z.
        Y comes home and demands a divorce from X.

        Do you really want to tell me that Y and Z did anything wrong here ? Technically they cheated but I lay the blame for their failed marriage squarely before the door of X.

        And before you ask, not only do I know several people who went through this exact story, I'm one of them.

        Of course I'm sure my X (see the clever pun there) would have a different version, but then X was never particularly good at telling the difference between reality and wishful thinking. The abuse in that case in fact, was most frequently based on the believe that you can turn the real world into whatever you demand it be by shouting, hitting, dehumanizing and withholding sex from anybody who dares to love you.
        Well suffice to say - sooner or later, that person stops loving you if you do that, and realizes that whatever the hell you may feel for him or her isn't love. If it takes another kinder, gentler person to show him or her that - then I still fail to see how you can blame that divorce on the people cheating.

        I'm not concerned with privacy writing this - male abuse happens as much as female abuse but is hardly ever talked about, so I make a point of talking about it, because it may encourage somebody else to do the right thing and leave before the day you hit back. Hell I wrote an article (under my own name) for a major woman's magazine about it.
        Besides, my divorce is long finished and hardly a secret so it's not like it's going to have any negative consequences for me.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Thank you.

          That's one of the most human posting's I've read in a while.

          similar stories have happened to close friends of mine, and every single time I defend their actions, because I know how hard a decision like that can be, yet how required it can be to make.
    • People who cheat have one thing to blame, and to find it they need only look in the mirror.

      In most civilized countries, cheating does not help divorce any more than going to an attorney and asking for divorce.

      Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way (or have your marriage broken with the person being 'cheated on' getting all your money).

      • If you want to have sex with more than one person while married; nothing stops you from laying out your preferences beforehand, why wouldn't you ask your partner and get their ok?
        • Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation.

          • Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation.

            I was thinking more along the lines of a contractual ok. For that matter, would you agree that if your partner is asking for divorce, they are dissatisfied?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by nomadic ( 141991 )
            Except that in certain countries, such as the US, then your partner can use this as a motivation for divorce and get a larger part of the pie than if he/she simply asked for it without motivation

            Maybe in certain states, but those states that have no-fault divorce whether you cheated or not has nothing to do with how the marital property is divided or how alimony is ordered.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way

        Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS. Everybody's not cut out for it. If you want to play the field, don't get married.

        (or have your marriage broken with the person being 'cheated on' getting all your money).

        If you are worried about someone taking your money, then don't get married. Do we see a pattern forming here? Yes. Yes, we do.

        • by jridley ( 9305 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:10AM (#32729488)

          Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS.

          Weird definition of marriage. I don't think marriage is only and strictly a pledge of monogamy. Marriage, strictly speaking, is a binding contract. Beyond that, it's up to the couple to define what it is. Marriage vows vary, even if held in a religious institution the official (minister) are fairly flexible about what the couple wants in the vows. I know a number of couples with open marriages; are they not married? Some have been married for decades and have kids and great relationships.

        • by mdwh2 ( 535323 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:21AM (#32729636) Journal

          Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS.

          No, it isn't.

          Of course I have no sympathy for people being unfaithful. But there is the question to people who have open relationships (which doesn't have to be "playing the field", it also includes long term multiple relationships with perhaps just one other person, rather than with large numbers of different people) - even though it's open and consensual, if the relationship then turns sour for other reasons, could the existence of a relationship with someone else be used against that person?

          Saying "they shouldn't get married" isn't an answer, as that means they can't get the rights that other married people are entitled to.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by garcia ( 6573 )

          Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS. Everybody's not cut out for it. If you want to play the field, don't get married.

          No, that's what marriage is to an individual with a religious background. For the rest of us it's a legal agreement between two people which supposedly brings some sort of perceived tax benefit which I have never seen (we pay out far more now that we're married), rights to share insurance, and rights of property and debt exchange after death.

          Stop trying to confuse what marriage really is wit

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by eln ( 21727 )

            it's a legal agreement between two people which supposedly brings some sort of perceived tax benefit which I have never seen (we pay out far more now that we're married)

            See an accountant. The tax benefit is highest for those in "traditional" marriages, meaning ones in which only one spouse works. Then, if you file a joint return you get twice the deduction you normally would have gotten. The math may also result in less tax even if you both work, depending on how disparate your incomes are. There are also certain deductions that you may qualify for but your spouse doesn't (or vice versa), but if you file a joint return it will apply to both of you (sometimes at twice t

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          OK, so *your* definition of marriage is the only one? Monogamy is an implied principle of *most marriages, but I do have a fair number of friends that play the field while married, under various rules. Don't try to restrict everyone else to your definition of a societal norm.
      • by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:55AM (#32729308)

        Marriage should not restrict you to have sex to only one person in any way

        If you said "to the exclusion of all others" or something to that effect when you took your wedding vows then yes it should. Otherwise you are cheating the other person out of what they signed up for.

        If you want to have an open marriage then go right ahead and do whatever works for you, but don't tell other people what works for them because that's just dumb.

        And if you got married on the basis that you would only have sex with your partner and then change your mind, at least be honest about it. It's the not being honest about it that makes it "cheating".

      • All people that replied to this message missed the point.

        I'm talking about what the marriage contract entitles, not about any moral idea of what marriage is.

        There are two ways to break out of this contract:
        - someone chooses to break it
        - someone failed to comply with the obligations of the contract

        The problem is that in the second case, the breaking up is beneficiary (financially) to the person who did not fail to comply with the obligations.

        What I am claiming is that being faithful be part of the obligation

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it.

      Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.

      • by rastilin ( 752802 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:49AM (#32729228)

        This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it. Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.

        Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          I'm guessing that you've never been through the potentially multiple years long and extremely expensive process.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by rastilin ( 752802 )

            I'm guessing that you've never been through the potentially multiple years long and extremely expensive process.

            You're saying that it makes more sense to go behind your partner's back than to tell them because it's too hard to be straight?

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by hedwards ( 940851 )
            That's not really an appropriate counterpoint. Marriage is about being with one person romantically to the exclusion of all others. If you don't like that then you shouldn't be married. Or I suppose move to a part of the world where polygamy is legal. If you think it's expensive to get a divorce without cheating, you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that cheating makes the whole process even uglier than before.

            And yes, people that cheat are always in the wrong here. I don't think that there's a way in
            • by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:11AM (#32730422)

              Marriage is about being with one person romantically to the exclusion of all others.

              Romantically? The belief that marriage is a romance-based commitment is probably the reason most of them fail. Why should one expect a marriage to survive only as long as a particular brand of hormone-based euphoria?

              If you can't live with a person after the blinders are off, you shouldn't have gotten married to them in the first place -- so making that commitment with blinders on (and being "in love" is unquestionably blinding) is the first mistake.

              And yes, people that cheat are always in the wrong here.

              Inasmuch as "cheating" involves breaking a promise, absolutely, every time. I never asked my wife for exclusivity -- and so while she's never broken it, neither would such be a dealbreaker.

          • by stewbacca ( 1033764 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:51AM (#32730094)

            I've been through it twice. Both times it cost less than $200. Both times took less than a week. Divorce is only as messy as the two parties make it.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by snowgirl ( 978879 )

              I've been through it twice. Both times it cost less than $200. Both times took less than a week. Divorce is only as messy as the two parties make it.

              Well, actually one party can decide nearly unilaterally to make it a big deal.

        • "Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?"

          I can think of a few reasons. Maybe there are children involved, and the divorce would harm the children emotionally or possibly deny one parent access to their children. Maybe there is a risk of alimony payments. Maybe there is a risk of losing a house, car, or other very valuable property.

          Divorce is not like breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend. It is a legal process with legal and financial ramifications.
      • So leave the incompatible marriage first? Not only is it the morally responsible thing to do, but it's also the most legally responsible thing to do (to minimize damages come the divorce).

        Cheating is always bad, if for no other reason than it is a betrayal of the vows you made when you get married. The very least you can do in a broken relationship is to end the marriage first before moving on to others.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        There are lots of views on morality, but for me personally, I'd say yes, cheating is ALWAYS bad, because above all, it's dishonest. More than that though, you are cheating yourself, and your professed parter, and even your person on the side out of a chance at a real love relationship. If you have real and significant problems with your spouse, get those issues out in the air. If they can't be worked on between the two of you, get some counseling, or get some papers filed. It's really that simple. "Stayin
      • Yes...you are always bad if you are cheating on your spouse to whom you are married. This of course doesn't apply to so-called "open" relationships, where you can have relationships with whomever you want while you are married. Let's look at it this way...marriage is one of two things, either a religious construct going back thousands of years, or a social construct for the purpose of seeing a distinct benefit in being with someone else. In the religious side, adultery is bad. On the social side, if you
      • by jamesh ( 87723 )

        Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad

        That's pretty much my opinion.

        , and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them.

        If the marriage isn't working out for you and you think there is no way it's ever going to work then grow a spine and be upfront about it _before_ you go chasing someone else. Don't go behind the other persons back because that's what makes it cheating.

        I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on /.

        I like to think i'm not so black and white when it comes to this sort of stuff but I can't think of a situation where sneaking around behind someones back is anything but the wrong thing to do.

      • by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:43AM (#32729952)
        You've been talking to CowboyNeal's wife
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Cheaters who get caught and don't change their behavior cause divorces.

      Uh, no. In the same sense that you post above.

      People who file for divorce cause divorces.

      If you promised someone your fidelity, and if you have broken that promise, look in the mirror to see whom to blame.

      As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.

      Now if your vow actually did contain these words then yes. In which case it is breaking your word that is causing all the trouble, and that could be on sex, but also on a lot of other things.

      So on the traditional marriage, one could say that breaking an unspoken expectation of one party is what caused the breakup.

      • As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.

        "The" traditional christian marriage vow? You're fired.

      • by kidgenius ( 704962 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:02AM (#32729390)

        As a matter of fact, even the traditional christian marriage vow does not contain faithfulness. Look it up.

        Let's see....something in Genesis if I recall pertained exactly to this. Something about adultery....I think it was one of ten ideas, or laws, or fuzzy warm feelings, or something like that. Maybe commandments? Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....

        • by Tom ( 822 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:51AM (#32731038) Homepage Journal

          Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....

          The traditional marriage vow does not contain a reference to the bible, the ten commandments or anything like that. In case you are particularily dense, it's the phrase with the "in good days and in bad days" and the "till death do us part".

          So, in fact, if you want to play it legal, the partner filing for divorce is actually the one who is breaking the vow.

          Yes, adultery is a sin that you should be stoned to death for on the market place by the rest of the village, according to the bible. Which is precisely the point I was making: It is not an explicit word, vow, promise, whatever that was given. It is an implicit content of the cultural background.

      • by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:45AM (#32729976)

        "Cheating" is called cheating for a reason [wiktionary.org]. Cheating is breaking the rules. In marriage, there are a number of rules, some traditional (the vows), some legal (pre-nups, adultery, alienation of affection), but most of the rules are agreed upon by the spouses (you take out the trash, and I do the laundry).

        If the spouses agree to an open marriage, then sex with other partners is not cheating. By agreement, the rules allow for it. In this context cheating is when you do something that you said you wouldn't do.

        In which case it is breaking your word that is causing all the trouble, and that could be on sex, but also on a lot of other things.

        Agreed.

        There are no simple answers.

        I respectfully disagree. The simple answer is "Keep Your Word", or even more simply "Don't Be an Asshole".

    • I think that you are understating the power of environmental influences, and the effect of feedback loops.

      People certainly differ in their willingness(and quite possibly capacity) to resist temptation; but this means that, on a population level, if you change the ease and availability of temptation, you change the number of people succumbing to it. It's like obesity. Yeah, everyone is, in theory, in control of what they eat, though metabolisms differ; but if the price of corn syrup drops by $1 a gallon,
    • by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      But why did you mod him down?? It's his birthday this year!!

  • From the article again, some rules for FB.

    "WHAT YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE HELD AGAINST YOU"

    "BEWARE YOUR FRENEMIES"

    "A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH ... BIG BUCKS"

    "PRIVACY, PRIVACY, PRIVACY"

    Useful advice, and not just on Facebook. Sorry about the caps, but that's how this advice was posted in the article.

  • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:21AM (#32728960) Journal

    It is simple, don't post anything online that you don't want others to see.

    For more info, visit my website. hsa://goatse.cx

    Yours truly,

    S.E. Goat

  • Stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:27AM (#32729002)
    Seriously, for centuries, people carrying on secret affairs would go to great lengths to maintain their secrecy. The Kama Sutra even recommends that cryptography be used, and provides a cipher, to help protect messages sent between lovers. What kind of idiot would post anything related to an adulterous affair anywhere on Facebook?
  • ...that horrible information gathering site. I deactivated my account about 2 months ago - would have been sooner if I hadn't make quite a bit of progress in backyard monsters! Hahaha...

    One person I know said it best - "I won't sign up for a facebook account because its like an after highschool popularity contest. And yes - I realize that you can "reconnect" with people from your past, but how much of a reconnection besides of couple of messages back and forth have you had? (rhetorical question - I rea
  • Rest assure (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:36AM (#32729100)
    Rest assure, only in exceptional cases including computer hardware life on /. is not really promiscuous. The lawyer may find evidence of marital lethargy though.
  • Oh, come ON! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Guru Meditation ( 12823 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @07:46AM (#32729208)

    "-- Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children."

    And THAT amounts to some degree of 'evidence' in court? Really, WTF? Since he's eeking custody, the being 'single' part is assumably correct. As for the childless status. Debatable, since he obviously does not have custody (yet). Besides that, I'm not going to buy drinks for every 'childless' single in a random bar who turns out to have at least one.

    And then:
    "-- Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his "write something about yourself" section: "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission." "
    If that, in court, is evidence of 'anger management issues' then I'm VERY glad I live on the other side of the pond. Taking remarks in a profile THAT serious is simply retarded.

  • by Heian-794 ( 834234 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:11AM (#32729500) Homepage

    From the article:

    Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him.

    -- Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.

    -- Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his "write something about yourself" section: "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission."

    -- Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook's Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.

    Three examples in a row of husbands/fathers being in the wrong before we finally get one where the wife is the lying one (and in that one, the mother's guilt is established at the end of the paragraph)? Here's a hint, journalists: don't make your readers wade through half an article of one-sidedness before tying to inject a little balance. Had I not kept at it, I would have thought that this was yet another hit piece on fathers, who seem to have no way of standing up to the pro-wife, pro-mother, pro-woman mainstream media. Fathers don't cheat any more than mothers do, and don't deserve the bad press they always seem to get. No wonder young men are refusing to get married these days.

  • by Permutation Citizen ( 1306083 ) * on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:38AM (#32730838)

    You don't need to avoid using facebook, just avoid marriage.

    What the point of getting married, considering the high probability of catastrophic ending ? Oh, it will not happen with you, only others...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cowscows ( 103644 )

      What's the point of playing a sport, considering the high probability that your team might lose? What's the point of starting a business, considering that most new businesses end up failing? What's the point of having kids, considering the high probability that they'll one day die?

      Everything has risks and rewards. It's up to the individual to prioritize the rewards and judge the risks before making their decision.

      I've only been married a few years, but it has been great so far, and the thought of having thi

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