I read about an iOS app today that essentially goes through your friends’ photographs looking for all the snaps of them in a bikini. The app in question is called Badabing! and it claims to be able to find the beach and pool pictures of your Facebook friends.

All you do is log in with your Facebook account and then choose a handful of friends whose pictures you’d like to app to scan, and once Badabing! has completed your search you are then able to bookmark your favourite photos. But wait a minute, that’s a huge invasion of privacy, is it not?

Well, to be perfectly blunt, no it isn’t. Creepy perhaps, but not an invasion of privacy. Think about it for a second – any photograph of you in a bikini or swimsuit that Badabing! finds is a photograph that you have uploaded to Facebook and shared with the person who downloaded and installed the app.

If you have an issue with people looking at your beach snaps then don’t upload them to Facebook in the first place, or only share photos with a private group of friends. They are the same photos that you were happy to share as part of a mass of snaps, only some bright spark has managed to make it easier for people to find the sexy ones, and is probably making a decent buck out of it.

The real villain here is the culture of over sharing, which in a digital age can quickly spiral out of control. Photos, videos, files etc can instantly be copied and distributed en masse with the utmost ease – so think about what it is you are sharing and who you are sharing it with before you private information becomes very much public.

A senior UK Government official has caused uproar by suggesting that internet users submit fake details to websites in order to protect their security. The official said that names and addresses posted on social networking sites “can be used against you” by criminals.

Andy Smith, an internet security chief at the Cabinet Office, advised that people should only give accurate information to trusted sites such as those run by the government. However, his remarks have been met with criticism from both his political opponents and from those who work in the industry.

Labour MP Helen Goodman described the advice as “totally outrageous”, adding: “This is the kind of behaviour that, in the end, promotes crime.” Simon Milner – Facebook’s Head of Policy in the UK and Ireland – said that he had a “vigorous chat” with Mr Smith following his statement in an effort to persuade him to revise his view.

This is not to say that Andy Smith doesn’t have a point. In fact, he is absolutely correct in his assertion that posting private information online can be a very dangerous thing to do. This was backed up by Lord Erroll, Chairman of the Digital Policy Alliance, who spoke with BBC Radio 4:

“If you are not sure about something then just be very, very cautious of what you put up, what you expose if you really don’t want to be used against you.”

His words are worth echoing – whenever you post something online, just take a moment to think about what the possible ramifications might be. In the past, people have had their houses burgled as a direct result of a Facebook Check-In showing them in the departures lounge at an airport. Saying too much online might also accidentally infringe the privacy of a friend, reveal confidential business information, or lead to any number of other potentially difficult situations.

If you absolutely must say something online, think about saying it within a private sharing network to a group of people or individuals who you know you can trust and where you can be absolutely certain that no one else will be listening.

One of the best things about social media is that it has the ability to put you in contact with the whole world. On the other hand, one of the worst things about social media is that it has the ability to put you in contact with the whole world.

If you are trying to broadcast a message to as many people possible, you’d be hard pushed to find a platform with as much of a reach as Facebook or Twitter. But for well-known individuals and celebrities, being just a keyboard away from your fans can come a at a price.

American sportscaster Erin Andrews has been the victim of harassment on Twitter, with one user sending her over 50 messages since September that threaten her with violence and even death. The tweets themselves are at times very graphic, so we won’t post any of them here, but you can view a selection of them at Mashable, where they also cover this story.

In the UK people have been given jail time for seemingly lesser tweets, so it will be interesting to see what comes of this situation in the USA. However there is another point worth making here, and that is one of over-sharing.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that there are people who have unhealthy obsessions or fixations on people, which is clearly the case with the Twitter user sending abusive messages to Erin Andrews. Twitter or no Twitter, that person still exists and presumably still has the same emotions.

The danger here is that by being on Twitter, Erin Andrews – and any other celebrity or member of the public for that matter – has not only found a way to directly share with friends, family, colleagues and fans, but also given anyone in a world a direct means of communicating with her. In this case, Twitter has given ill-intentioned people a window right into her life, and the ability to have an effect on it by sending her harassing messages.

Sometimes it’s not what we say online that can have a detrimental effect, but where we say it. Twitter is a wonderful tool for mass broadcast and even – when used carefully – private conversations. However, the problem with having 1.5 million followers is that you will never know who they are, why they follow you, or what they might be thinking.

Just be careful who you let into your online life.

Social media laws in the UK are set to be reviewed in the wake of a recent number of prosecutions that have had a “chilling effect” on free speech. Speaking to the BBC, Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC said that the right to be offensive “has to be protected”.

On Monday, Matthew Wood was jailed for posting comments about April Jones, the missing five-year-old girl from Wales, while Azhar Ahmed was given 240 hours community service after he wrote an offensive post about dead British soldiers. Both prosecutions were made under the UK’s Communications Act 2003.

The CPS will invite academics, lawyers and representatives from social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to be a part of the discussions that will shape the new guidelines for policing social media. Police forces are concerned that their resources are being wasted on too many petty online rows. Mr Starmer explained that the existing law is difficult for prosecutors to work within.

He also added:

“The emerging thinking is that it might be sensible to divide and separate cases where there’s a campaign of harassment, [or] cases where there’s a credible and general threat, and prosecute in those sorts of cases… And put in another category communications which are, as it were, merely offensive or grossly offensive… [It] doesn’t mean the second category are ring-fenced from prosecution, but it does I think enable us to think of that group in a slightly different way.”

Regardless of how the talks pan out and what guidelines are drawn up, it is clear that anything said online is currently perceived as ‘public’. The line between private and public when it comes to online communications is getting blurrier by the day, but does there come a point where prosecuting people for saying something is an affront to their basic right to free speech?

Tell us what you think by leaving a comment below.