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New research by the Press Complaints Commission has revealed that nine out of ten people in the UK think there should be tighter regulation of information on social networking sites.

The vast majority of participants said they would like sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace to follow specific rules and regulations to help prevent the abuse of personal information such as private photos, instead of them each having their own set of t’s & c’s.

For many, the potential for abuse of private information is an increasing concern, not just because of the threat of criminal activity, but also because information is increasingly being used by the media. Many media companies were criticised last year for the “digital doorstepping” of victims of the Virginia Tech shooting spree.

Of course, the other side to this argument is that people shouldn’t really be uploading any personal information or photos that they wouldn’t want others to have access to in the first place. As Charlie Beckett, the Director of Polis (a journalism thinktank at the London School of Economics) says “If you take pictures and put them on Facebook, you’ve deliberately surrendered your privacy.”

Sir Christopher Meyer, the chairman of the PCC, said that there is an “unprecedented scale” of information being put on to social networks, and suggested that “there is a need for public awareness about what can happen to information once it is voluntarily put into the public domain.”

For more info on this research, visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jun/05/privacy.socialnetworking

Tags  abuse bebo Facebook information MySpace personal information Press Complaints Commission privacy regulation Research social networks