Phyllis Brown — a name not too many people recognize.

Who remembers the case surrounding her, referred to in the news and on countless online blogs as “the MySpace murder?”

Brown, 27, went on a date with John Gaumer, a 22-year-old student at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, according to WBAL-TV11 of Baltimore.

The two met on MySpace.com and went on a date in late December — a date that ended in Brown’s death after an argument during the car ride turned violent.

“Crimes in Virginia and New Jersey, meanwhile, have also been linked with MySpace,” reports the Baltimore Sun in a Feb. 11 article. “But the blame for such incidents — be they criminal or simply embarrassing,” the article continued, “doesn’t lie with MySpace.”

Who, then, is to blame?

“Anyone who’d go on a date with someone they’ve never met,” Gennie Stafford, a freshman in art and design, said.

She said the sites don’t have a responsibility in these cases because “this Web site isn’t acting as a dating service.”

Morgan Spivey, who is also a freshman in art and design, agreed. “If you follow the description of the site, it’s supposed to be for people you already know,” she said. “I don’t think online is a means of meeting people. There’s so much more you get from people face-to-face.”

Both students have Facebook.com accounts, though, and use them to “keep up with friends.”

Paul Cousins, director of student conduct, said the difference between face-to-face contact and virtual contact is in how much information people tend to post.

“Because that medium is more cool in nature, a lot of folks have fewer safeguards in place,” he said. “A guy in a club won’t get your number, you might give him a fake. But a lot of folks think nothing of putting their cell number and AIM information on MySpace and Facebook.”

This, Cousins said, makes all of that information “available to stalkers, makes you open for harassment.”

This information, posted so that friends can view it, he said, could end up as “a window for the crazy ex-boyfriend [into] where you’re going, what you’re doing.”

It amazes him how some students will put a block on their directory information “and put all that information and more on Facebook. Their likes, dislikes, AIM, cell number, landline — how does that work?”

Spivey and Stafford don’t ascribe to this contradiction of logic, but they do post some information publicly while keeping other things private.

“People can only see your profile if you are friends with them,” Stafford said, and she is “not really worried about [the Interests] part of the profile, but the contact info is private.”

“I’ve had weird people I don’t know contact me to be a friend,” Spivey said, “but I don’t add people I don’t know.” She also points out the site “already has your e-mail — if they really wanted to talk to you, they’d e-mail you.”

“The ability to reject people, so that they can’t see my info, is good,” Stafford said.

David-Ezra Shamash of Facebook.com’s support team said this ability to choose who can view your posted information is key to the site’s privacy policy.

“Privacy is definitely a major concern for the Facebook team,” he said. “We understand that our current privacy policy is a major selling point for our users, and we aim to respect that and have an array of customized options for who can access different areas of profile.”

Shamash said the site’s keepers “are constantly updating Facebook’s privacy settings in consideration of user concerns. If there is an onslaught of user concerns in a certain area of privacy, we will enable a new setting to accommodate it.”

Students still post contact information that can lead to unwanted messages, and there are occasions when these can be harassing, threatening or damaging.

Who protects our privacy?

Facebook.com acknowledges these incidents occur, but Shamash said, “When someone reports harassment or libel, we go into the account and find the abuse they reported. If the abuse is a violation of Facebook’s terms of use, the harassing party’s account will result with a warning or deactivation — depending on the severity of the violation.”

Cases of harassment, stalking or other issues stemming from online sources can be difficult to deal with, even for police.

Lt. Rick Parmley, South District commander of Campus Police, notes these problems.

“How do you control something like that? It’s a whole new area for law enforcement to try and develop a response to,” he said, and added it is a continuing difficulty “to develop discretionary techniques to do our jobs without infringing on anyone’s rights.”

To avoid having to deal with these types of issues — and more importantly to help protect the students — Parmley said Campus Police is taking a “proactive stance” by making people aware of what is possible.

For example, Sgt. Jon Barnwell develops and delivers presentations including statistics of what can happen when that kind of information is put out, and uses Facebook.com to gauge if his information is helping.

“As it stands, we have not had any significant incidents concerning Facebook [or similar social network sites],” Parmley said.

Cousins reported, “There have been cases where we’ve had what turned out to be regretted sex. People were contacted out of the blue, essentially looking for a date, and it didn’t turn out the way they wanted to.”

What can be done to avoid these issues?

“There is always an issue with making private information public,” Parmley said, but “people need to be more sensitive and aware of what they’re subjecting themselves to by putting up this sort of information.”

Facebook.com advises users do just that.

Shamash said, “We encourage users to post anything they are comfortable sharing with the university community at large. Many users post anything they want, which is cool if they are down with other students at N.C. State seeing it. Others change their privacy settings so only a select portion of their community can view their profile content — such as their own friends but no faculty.”

Students should remember harassment is not the only potential negative result from posting a little too much information to these sites.

Cousins recalled a recent conversation about whether it was “appropriate for future teachers to use Facebook at all, because it’s not private.”

He reminded students that potential employers and even parents can easily, if not intentionally, be given access to the sites.

He also gave a piece of advice that seems obvious but is overlooked by some students with, “don’t post generally embarrassing or humiliating photos.”

In one way or another, Cousins said, “there is always the risk that this stuff can come back to haunt you.”