The Washington Post released a story chronicling the rise in the number of people who have felt “overexposed” by the sudden upswing in popularity of social networking sites and are reinventing themselves online. The story leads off with Luke Mitchell, who tells the story of how he amassed a large number of friends online in under two years on sites like MySpace but deleted the over-saturated profile because his employers were able to log on and see pictures of him in his private life that were not work appropriate.

From the article:

“All of the sudden I felt completely exposed,” said Mitchell, a 22-year-old financial analyst in the District. “It was fine when I was in school, but I just started my first job. I can’t be out there like that.”

This is a trend we are seeing a lot here at ReputationDefender. People will come to us with tales of social networking gone wrong, like the students who lost internship opportunities because of their online profiles.  We have nothing against social networks; we promote them and believe they are a vital and valuable tool for people on the Internet. Given the increased visibility of social profiles, it is important to monitor the content you post and who has access to it in the digital age.
ReputationDefender encourages social networkers to educate themselves about privacy controls and use them to keep strangers away from their personal online space.

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