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Privacy and the Internet. note: this posting is for general information concerning the current state of privacy on Internet. I do not necessarily agree with what is allowed under the current laws. 1. Bulletin boards. The same rules apply to electronic bulletin boards as to physical bulletin boards. The bulletin board is considered to be a public place, and any information posted there may be used by anyone else for whatever purpose they see fit within the confines of copyright laws. The list server is considered to be a form of bulletin board. 2. E-mail. E-mail is considered to be in the same category as a telephone call. You need permission of the other person to use information for other than its intended purpose. NOTE: Although the e-mail system is used to transmit bulletin board postings, that protection ends once the message is posted. 3. Chat rooms. Unless they are designated as private chat rooms, the same rules apply to them as to public forums, what you say becomes a public record. Essentially the bottom line is: do not use a public forum if you don't want your remarks to be made public. All that being said, I was a PWP before I became a researcher. Therefore, I'm very sensitive to the concerns of the participants. This is why I sought the permission of those in charge and notified the membership at large of my proposed research. The privacy issue is one of the primary issues concerning online communities. The ironic thing is you cannot do research on privacy without doing research on the group that wishes to remain private. To give you a better idea of where I'm coming from, I'm providing a link from my Web page to the online community Web page of our research group. Although some of the research articles give specific examples of messages, as I said this will not be the case in my research. Named to be replaced by ID numbers and all statistical paradigms will be applied to the group as a whole rather than individuals. The URL for the site is http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/communities/ Sincerely, Bruce