Police increasingly use social networking websites in detective work - The Boston Globe

Sign of the times

When a Wilmington man in his early 20s overdosed on heroin the day after Christmas, local police Detective Pat Nally turned to his computer. He wanted to look at the deceased's Facebook and MySpace pages for possible clues about the source of the drug and who might have been using it with the man.

"People arrange to buy and sell drugs on Facebook; there's talk of what they may do and where they may go," said Nally. "We'd be foolish not to use it as an investigative tool."

Police increasingly use social networking websites in detective work - The Boston Globe