Entries from July 2008 ↓

ReputationDefender recently caught wind of this VentureBeat post that deals with Online Identity Management and Internet Privacy concerns.

Facebook had planned to work on the “Friend Connect” product with Google, but now it seems they’ve mothballed it. A post from Facebook’s developer blog explained that they have ceased working on Google’s “Friend Connect” project because of a violation of internal terms of service.

Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology, […] We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Of course, the first thing we thought when we read this was “You mean you didn’t take a look at the project before you partnered up?” I mean, you couldn’t spare one engineer for an hour or two to look at this?

Facebook’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly shed some light on the matter when said in an interview with CNET News.com that his company never actually had a formal partnership with Google in Friend Connect. “There wasn’t participation to start with. That was sort of a mis-impression that may have been formed by their release,” he said. “We weren’t briefed on how the Friend Connect product was going to work.”

Interesting move. Facebook has always maintained that they are all about the privacy of their users, and this move seems to reinforce that. But the boys over at Google disagree with the argument put forth stating: “We think that Friend Connect at all steps puts users in control of their own data, at every step of the way, and we’re disappointed that Facebook disabled their users’ ability to use Friend Connect with their Facebook friends.”

Can’t we all just get along?

CNN has a hard hitting piece that shows how prosecutors are increasingly using photos from social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook during sentencing hearings to color the character of defendants and argue for increased jail time.

The article focuses on 20 year old college junior, Joshua Lipton, who, two weeks after being charged with drunk driving and seriously injuring a woman in a car crash, appeared at a costume party wearing a prisoner’s outfit.

Photographs appeared on Facebook of the accused partying it up in the orange jumpsuit and proved he was without remorse, a prosecutor argued. The judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved.

The story begins in October 2006 when prosecutors from Rhode Island say Lipton was drunk and speeding near his school, Bryant University in Smithfield. They argue that he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.

Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling the drunken-driving case, said a victim of the crash gave him copies of the photographs from the accused man’s Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan then took the pictures – which had been posted by someone else but were accessible on the accused man’s page – and put them into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.

The defense attorney, Kevin Bristow, tried to argue that the photos showed his client’s confusion after the accident and even noted that his client wrote apologetic letters to the crash victim and her family.

“The pictures showed a kid who didn’t know what to do two weeks after this accident,” Bristow said, adding that his client was so upset that he left college. “He didn’t know how to react.”

But Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini was unmoved and said the prosecutor’s slide show influenced his decision to sentence the Facebook bandit.

“I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison,” the judge said in an interview.

Other unrepentant defendants have received harsher sentences as a direct result of their online profiles.

Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged in a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked whether she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.

But she didn’t remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said, he was “blindsided” by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.

One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.

Binkerd wasn’t doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison, though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.

“When you take those pictures like that, it’s a hell of an impact,” he said.

PC Authority is reporting that a fake Facebook page set up to humiliate a former friend has lead to severe, court-awarded damages.

A freelance photographer is facing a £22,000 bill after setting up a fake Facebook page that libelled a former classmate.

[SNIP]

[The Judge] awarded . . . £15,000 in damages and £2,000 for breach of privacy and gave his company £5,000 for libel.

“The significance of this case is that it shows that what you post is not harmless, but has consequences,” media lawyer, Jo Sanders, of Harbottle & Lewis, told the BBC.

“Sat at home or school or in the office, it’s easy to think of social networking sites as harmless fun, that it’s like chatting with friends, and that things posted there are either a joke or just a mischievous way of causing embarrassment. This ruling puts an end to that.”

Internet defamation and internet revenge often take the form of fake profiles and profile jacking. This ruling, and the hefty costs attached to it, shows how serious the notion of Online Reputation Management is for the courts in a world where we are increasingly identified by our virtual identities.

One of Google’s mantras since Day 1 has been “Don’t be evil.” People have generally applauded this unique (albeit vague) corporate philosophy, as  a refreshing new way of approaching business. It goes a long way into showing the rest of the world what the mindset is within the Googleplex.

But, ah yes, when you bring up “evil” you inevitably invite a philosophical discussion. Starting broadly, what is “evil”? For that matter, what is “good” (for if there is an evil, there must be an opposite, right?)? We’ll spare you the pondering and just point out why we’re posting today:

Google has murdered the AdSense account run by one of the web’s most influential anti-Scientology sites.

Yesterday, the search giant cut off all ads served to Enturbulation, a fledgling site dedicated to promoting activism against the Church of Scientology and all its related organizations.

The above quote is a grab from an article that is appearing in The Register, out of the United Kingdom.

Enturbulation is considered to be something of a “home” for the now infamous Anonymous movement, which attacks Scientology. While it would be fun to play tin-foil hat and start coming up with some sinister plot involving L. Ron Hubbard controlling Google, a more sensible explanation can be found in Google’s new AdSense policies which state that partner sites may not include “advocacy against any individual, group, or organization.”

It’s an interesting move by Google, and one that is similar to actions by YouTube (which Google also owns) last month. In that instance, YouTube (easily the most popular video site on the Internet) deleted an account run by Mark Bunker, a well-known TV journalist and anti-Scientology activist. YouTube’s official line is that it destroyed Bunker’s video channel because he had a previous account suspended for violations of site policy.

So, is Google run by Scientology? Definitely not. But the search giant is taking a stand against online defamation and internet harassment.

Regular readers of the ReputationDefender blog will remember this post which highlighted the Online Reputation Management inquiries ReputationDefender has received from across the globe. The post also highlighted RD employee Adam, who proudly wore his ReputationDefender shirt across Thailand in order to spread the word about Online Reputation Management.

Recently, another ReputationDefender employee, Michelle, returned from her European vacation with photos of her proudly evangelizing the RD brand in Paris and Italy. I’m sure the international fashionistas were in awe of those stylish threads.

Are there any international readers of this blog? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. Tell us how ReputationDefender defends your reputation and gives you an Edge across the globe.