Social networking, and Twitter in particular, often bring an "anything goes" mentality - an attitude that bolsters the users of social networking but one which can, under the wrong circumstances, get us into trouble. Check out this list of Five uses of Twitter that could land YOU in hot water:

1. Tweeting Negatively About Your Job.

We've heard about this one so often that it's practically a cliche. Remember, unless you've chosen to protect your Twitter status updates (which most people don't), that means that ANYONE can read them - and they don't even have to be a Twitter user to do so. Many tweets show up on Google searches, which means that if you include, say, your company's name in your negative work-related Tweets, you could very quickly come to the attention of your superiors. Your boss doesn't have to be twitter-savvy to find out you've been complaining about him behind your back.

Examples: Check here or here.

Remember, if it's not something you would say straight to your boss' face, you probably don't want to broadcast it to the entire world.

2. Tweeting Complaints About a Company or Service

Contrary to popular opinion, griping on Twitter apparently isn't the same as griping to your friends; the difference, it would seem, lies in the fact that Twitter can be considered legally to constitute "publishing," meaning that negative statements you make on Twitter could be constituted as slander or libel, depending on the context.

That's exactly what one Chicago woman discovered when the real estate company she was complaining about on Twitter sued her for $50,000. When in doubt, always remember - the whole world can read what you're writing, and legally, you're "disseminating" and "publishing" those tweets.

3. Tweeting from a Fake Celebrity Account

So far we haven't seen this one blow up too dramatically, but that doesn't mean that it's just waiting to happen. When Cardinals manager Tony La Russa discovered that someone had started a fake Twitter parody account in his name, he decided to just go straight for the source - he sued Twitter. Although that lawsuit was quickly laid to rest on the grounds that it was slightly crazier than Gary Busey on a five-day cocaine bender, that doesn't change the fact that such lawsuits could easy start to reappear - and next time, they could be directed against the Twitterers themselves, as opposed to the Twitter service.

As a rule of thumb, fake celebrity accounts are OK - as long as they're clearly identified as a parody celebrity account. If your users aren't sure, that could be grounds for an impersonation charge.

4. Tweeting About Gagged Information

Information gets "gagged" by courts and political bodies for a wide variety of reasons - but the reasons really aren't what matters. What matters is that disseminating "gagged" information is in and of itself a crime, and as Twitter usage increases and we start seeing more and more stories about information that was supposed to remain secret being leaked out over Twitter, is a certainty that we're going to see more investigations into Twitter usage being launched by governing bodies. The thing about using Twitter is that your information really isn't secure - even if you start a new Twitter account with which to disseminate gagged information, there's still IP and, in some cases, even geolocational information that gets recorded on Twitter's backend - all of which could come back to bite you in the behind if the law gets involved.

5. Tweeting About Protests / Police Action

This one very well could be the most dangerous of the bunch, as one Queens resident learned earlier this month when police arrested him in conjunction with helping to coordinate protest action during the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. While most of these other uses of Twitter could land you in hot water with courts, this one could actually land you in jail - and hard time is, well, hard.

If you must insist on using Twitter for coordinating protests or monitoring police activity, create yourself an ad-hoc group of Twitterers you can trust, get them on your follower list, and protect your updates so that the outside world (i.e., the police) don't know what you're doing. After all, the Po-Po uses Twitter too.