Common Curtesy

I pose to you a question. Since when did common curtesy go out the window? When did the ease of internet usage take away our sense of right and wrong? Shouldn't the same rules apply through the cyber world as exist in the real world?

I bring this up because of the current predicament my eldest finds herself in. A high school classmate found her through that incidious website Classmates.com and proceeded to write a "hi, how ya doing" kind of e-mail. Polite and sweet as always, she responded with much information and pictures... never dreaming he would forward it on to others. WTF? What was this guy thinking?

In the real world, people would communicate by telephone or letters. (Letters are those pieces of paper where you use a utensil called an ink pen to scribble your thoughts then put them in a paper packet called an envelope and stick more little scraps of paper on the corner worth money to send them. Those are called stamps and are issued by the almost defunct postal service. Ask them, they'll tell you.) If you were to reply to said letter by a letter of your own, and included some snapshots of your family, it would be very difficult for the recipient to copy the letter as well as the photos and send it on to many other people. As well as being unheard of to do so without asking.

What has happened to the common cutesy to ask someone before sending on their personal information? Am I just too old-fashioned to think the same rules should apply through the cyber world as it does in the real one? Can you still be polite and technologically advanced?