Three pupils from a school in Cincinnati have been suspended for setting up a group on the popular social networking site Facebook.

The Taylor High students have been accused of creating an entry in November which suggested that a teacher, who they named, was a member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

When the incident came to light, the youths were suspended for ten days and will be excluded from school for a further 80 days when the semester resumes in the new year.

Pennsylvania's Department of Aging has notified over 20,000 people that some of their personal information was on a laptop computer stolen earlier in December.

The state-owned notebook was stolen from a home in Johnstown while its owner was attending a funeral on December 5th.

Data on the system included the social security numbers of around 16,000 people.

However, police said that they believed the computer was taken for its street value and that there was no evidence that the information, which was double password protected, has been used inappropriately.

A new report has shown that teenagers are actively embracing social networking sites and other interactive online media.

The research, carried out by Pew international, showed that 64 per cent of online teenagers aged between 12 and 17 have created some form of content on the internet in recent months.

According to the research, teenage girls are more likely to maintain a blog than their male equivalents and are also more likely to post photos on sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Flickr.

Boys are generally more likely to post videos on websites like YouTube.

More and more people are searching for their own names online, a study has shown.

With 2007 shaping up to be remembered as the year of the social network, 47 percent of internet users have searched for their own name online, research from the Pew Internet Project discovered. This compared to 22 percent who had done this in 2002.

What's more, 53 per cent of people said that they have looked up information about personal and business contacts online.
"The cumulative traces of our online activity are more visible in the age of Web 2.0," explained Mary Madden, a co-author of the report.