Editorial: Protect your own privacy

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

I n some ways, it's tough to pity the men who thought they had some shred of privacy when they sent risque e-mails attempting to woo a fantasy woman.

Some unknown number of men bit on a devious hoax, answering a personal ad on Craigslist offering a quick and easy tryst with a young woman, 18-20 years old, only to find out later that she was really a man in New York intent to shame them. And that he did. Among other public mockings, he plastered their responses and photos they sent, some in the Full Monty, on a Web site. For all of the men, married or not, that was quite a turn of events.

This being America, some of the men in this bizarre tale, as told in Sunday's Las Vegas Sun by Abigail Goldman, are considering suing. They say the New York man is no hoaxer but a criminal for violating their privacy.

The "victims," as some call them, are at best victims of their own naivete. The fact of the matter is privacy on the Internet is tenuous at best.

Remove the men's motives and you have a lesson for the rest of us: Beware. It could have been a scorned lover, a former co-worker or a friend sharing your "personal" e-mails with the world or your spouse or your boss.

The scary thing is that the men's e-mails will be floating around in cyberspace for a long time. Even though the Web site was taken down, the Internet has a long memory.

The laws regulating the Internet are still miry clay that have yet to form. Communication on the Internet falls somewhere between a letter and a conversation at a busy coffeehouse. It's complex - how much privacy should we expect in a medium that is electronic and wide open?

While Congress and the courts are going to have to sort this out, our advice is simple: Let the e-mailer beware.

Just ask Mark Foley.