In recent Seattle Times articles about local accused killers and victims, I’ve noticed photos and information obtained from the news subjects’ postings on social networking sites such as myspace and friendster and also information from personal websites. I had two reactions: 1) How can you fact-check information from a personal or social website? 2) Everything you put on the web is public information. Obvious perhaps, but the intended audience of a personal profile on a networking site is not the million readers of a newspaper. The Seattle Times editor-at-large took note of this new avenue of research and wrote about a brownbag discussion held to discuss use of networking site information. He acknowledges that “one can’t assume the accuracy of the information or even that it was posted by the people listed on the site.” Use of these sites is not discouraged but reporters are urged to be “overly cautious.” He closes his commentary with a list of “Ethical considerations for the press” which seems like overkill for the issue at hand, but certainly illustrates his concern.