Networking and expression — that sums up most of the activity that’s done on the internet today. It’s no more just an information powerhouse. And if the increasing number of social networking sites marks the former, the growing number of blogs across the webspace confirms the latter. Blogs, which till a couple of years ago were assumed to be something meant only for the geeks, have now become mainstream. And social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook have been the outstanding success stories of 2006. Why else would Google buy YouTube for $1.65 billion?

In fact, one high point of internet in 2006 has been the rise of social networking sites. There was a strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks like Flickr and del.icio.us. Google’s Orkut too is a hot favourite among youngsters: Over 100,000 users within 48 hours of launch, while MySpace has over 125,000,000 users. It’s so, so hot that we now have close to a dozen social networking sites focused on India: yaari.com, minglebox.com, zhoom.com, DesiMartini.com and humsubka.com, to name a few.

HUNTINGTON — There seems to be a new type of identity theft, where a person’s name is borrowed and placed with derogatory pictures and comments on personality profile Web sites like MySpace.

I’m Bob Doughty. Two thousand six is almost over. On this special show, Shirley Griffith and I look back at some trends from the past year.

He cites a warning by Prof. Nigel Smart of the University of Bristol (UK): “I am concerned that from some of the posts I have seen, by colleagues, students and others, that there is a deep societal problem emerging of people giving up their privacy without realising it”.

Chat rooms used to be considered a prime privacy worry but they were effectively abandoned as worries about sexual predators rose.

December 24, 2006 — If you’re not careful what you throw in your trash, you might be throwing away your most valuable possession: your identity.

In the last two months, police report at least seven complaints from local residents whose trashcans or trash was stolen.

“This is what we commonly refer to as Dumpster diving,” police Sgt. William Dietrich said.

This sort of trash picking can be profitable.

“The suspect will obtain vital financial information by simply digging through trash,” Dietrich said. “It’s become a problem recently in the past three to four years.”

This year alone, there have been about 1,000 cases of identity theft reported to the Brownsville Police Department, Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique said.

In 2001, there were more than 100,000 cases of identity theft in the United States, and that has increased to more than 1 million cases per year, Dietrich said.

“Over a five-year period, more than 27 million consumers were victims of identity theft,” according to a Federal Trade Commission Survey conducted in 2003.