Recently, the court systems in Australia and New Zealand have used Facebook to serve legal papers to people who could not otherwise be located and to notify them of legal actions taken against them. In Australia, a court allowed the use of Facebook to notify a couple of a default judgment ruling made against them in a home foreclosure case. The couple failed to appear in court and the judge agreed that the legal notification could be made via Facebook "service in cases where a defendant may be difficult to find or evidence suggests they are deliberately evading documents being served on them."

A similar case was when a New Zealand court authorized the serving of court papers via Facebook in order to notify an individual about an intent to sue. Facebook reportedly has praised the rulings, saying: "We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Face Book as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication. The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people's lives."

Do you find this alarming or are you not surprised?

Social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace were intended to provide a service to online communities of people who shared common interests and activities or who were interested in exploring the interest and activities of others. Purely social and not at all official. But it did not take long for content found on social networks to be used, legally, against individuals who communicated information about themselves on the sites. We have read about discipline actions levied against individuals by their employers who claimed to be out sick and then posted pictures of themselves at the beach.

Social networks are a new way for people to communicate and share information, informally. I remember when we once considered the advent of email to be an informal means of communication. While it did take years for emails to rise to the level of an official record and for the courts to recognize their legal standings, it will not take long for the courts to rule that content on the so-called social networks may be used in legal settings, for or against you. That time is already upon us "“ at least in Australia and new Zealand. Are you willing to risk the potential for legal consequences for your "unofficial" communications?

Think about what you post. You may be the next person to be served via Facebook. You may not be the first to lose or be denied a job based upon unofficial content that you have posted on the Net.