Every day, social networking, blogging and microblogging sites increase in popularity. People turn to popular sites like Twitter and Facebook, where they can tell the world what they are doing, how they are feeling, and what they had for lunch. Seems like fun, right? Who doesn’t want all their friends to know exactly what their day was like, or what their opinion is of their scary next door neighbor? Who doesn’t want to express their well thought out opinions on their blogs, and receive the digital reactions of friends and random strangers?

Unfortunately, people forget that the internet is unforgiving, and it doesn’t forget. Generally speaking, once something is submitted to the internet, even if it is done so as a private message or a protected blog post, that information can be viewed by unintended audiences.

According to Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch, 258 web-related court actions have been filed already this year.(1) Recently, a magistrate judge in England posted updates regarding cases he was hearing to his Twitter. (2). The judge was reprimanded, and he stepped down from the bench because of the controversy.

There was a case in Canada this year that is more relevant to typical users of social media sites. In Leduc v. Roman, 2009 CanLII 6838, the claimant was ordered to produce Facebook status updates as part of the discovery process in the case, even though the status updates were made on a private page. The reason? To prove that Leduc’s claim that the defendant’s negligence had caused a loss of enjoyment of life for Leduc was false. While this case was in a Canadian court, you can rest assured that it will only be a matter of time until a similar decision is made by an American judge.

What does this mean for you? It means that all those opinions, status updates, tweets and blog posts you make can be held against you in a court of law. Even the ones that you make privately. You should absolutely remember this whenever you submit any kind of information to the internet. You never know when your words could come back to haunt you.