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The development of information technology over recent years has completely transformed the way we communicate with each other – and it is important to be aware of how this impacts on the relationship between the dental team as professionals (and GDC registrants) and patients, friends and members of the public. Professionalism can be defined as the conduct or behaviour of an individual in upholding the social contract between society and the profession.¹ All GDC registrants should be familiar with the GDC guidance on e-professionalism and the use of social media.^2,3 The social contract is now directly related to social media, which can be described as software that enables individuals and communities to gather, communicate, share and exchange information in a variety of formats e.g. textual, graphical, audio and video. This inter-relationship blurs the personal-professional divide and can modify personal and professional reputations by making public inappropriate information and breaching patient confidentiality. Defining professional boundaries in the digital world is becoming increasingly challenging. An analysis of 271 medical blogs in 2008 revealed that, in 57% of cases, the author could be identified and, in 17%, the patient or doctor could be identified⁴. From an analysis of 5,156 tweets by doctors in 2011, 5% had unprofessional content and 38 potentially violated patient confidentiality.⁵ Whilst this might initially be thought to be a very small percentage of violations of confidentiality, it can take only one occurrence to initiate fitness to practise proceedings. What also should be remembered is that, once you publish anything online – even if it is only for a second or two be it text, images or video – it is in the public domain and could be copied and accessible to anyone, even though you have published it on a site such as Facebook, which is restricted to your personal friends. Additionally, once out in the public domain it may be impossible to retrieve even though the information may be inaccurate or inappropriate.