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SHOULD PEOPLE be allowed to change their names to disassociate themselves from embarrassing youthful follies or damaging indiscretions recorded on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter? Eric Schmidt, chief executive of internet search engine Google, believes they should. He bases his argument on the modern reality that details of the private lives and personal views of young people are now so easily accessible online. Certainly, there is cause for concern, especially for job-seekers. A recent Microsoft survey of employers found that two-thirds had rejected applicants on the basis of personal information obtained from internet searches.

Online social networks such as Facebook, which has about 500 million members, are a growth phenomenon of the internet age. They have changed how people communicate with each other by enabling the exchange of text, pictures and videos between friends: easily, quickly and at little cost. People now spend more time on such sites than on e-mail. Their power and influence was best exemplified in the US presidential election campaign of Barack Obama where Facebook and Twitter were fully exploited in mobilising voter support for him.