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Muslim clerics are seeking ways to regulate online behavior in Indonesia, saying the exploding popularity of social networking sites like Facebook could encourage illicit sex. Around 700 clerics, or imams, gathering in the world's most populous Muslim nation on Thursday were considering guidelines forbidding their followers from going online to flirt or engage in practices they believe could encourage extramarital affairs. Inside Facebook, an independent Palo Alto, Calif.-based blog dedicated to tracking the site, says Indonesia, a nation of 235 million, was the fastest-growing country in Southeast Asia for the site in 2008, with a 645 percent increase to 831,000 users. It is already the most visited site in Indonesia, and with less than 0.5 percent of Indonesia's citizens wired, there is a huge potential for growth. "The clerics think it is necessary to set an edict on virtual networking, because this online relationship could lead to lust, which is forbidden in Islam,...

Social networking and photo-sharing websites retain photographs deleted by users, reveals research by Cambridge University. Researchers uploaded photos on 16 popular websites - including Facebook, Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa - noting the web addresses where the images were stored and then deleted them. The team said 30 days later, it was able to find them on seven sites, including Facebook, using the direct addresses even after the photos appeared to have gone, BBC reported Thursday. Facebook, however, says deleted photos are removed from its servers "immediately". Joseph Bonneau, one of the PhD students who carried out the study, said, "This demonstrates how social networking sites often take a lazy approach to user privacy, doing what's simpler rather than what is correct. "It's imperative to view privacy as a design constraint, not a legal add-on." The Cambridge University researchers said sites such as Flickr, Picasa did better and M...

Militants and hate groups increasingly use social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube as propaganda tools to recruit new members, according to a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The report released on Wednesday noted a 25 percent rise in the past year in the number of "problematic" social networking groups on the Internet. The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism." "Every aspect of the Internet is being used by extremists of every ilk to repackage old hatred, demean the 'Enemy,' to raise funds and since 9/11, recruit and train Jihadist terrorists," the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement. The Jewish human rights group named after the renowned Nazi hunter has been monitoring the use of the Internet by extremists for over a dec...