Entries from April 2009 ↓

We’ve touched on this trend numerous times in the ReputationDefender Blog, but it continues to pop up in the mainstream media. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, a new survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) indicates that approximately 25% of colleges use social networking sites or search engines to research applicants.

While the article does not state which colleges participated in the study, students should not risk the chance of having obscene or unflattering material online. With information readily available through only a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse, students must take a proactive stance in monitoring their social networking profiles. What does this mean? In the words of David Hawkins, the director of public policy and research for NACAC,  “Don’t post anything that you don’t want your mother or father or college admission officer to see.”

From the article:

The report, which also looked at colleges’ use of the Internet to recruit students, was written by Nora Ganim Barnes, director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She said some colleges turn to the social websites because “no school wants to give a prestigious scholarship to someone standing on a beer keg and wearing a lampshade.”

The New York Times Jobs section has a great how to article for social networking- with a twist. Instead of showing readers how to max out their online connections and build their personal brand among other professionals, this article shows how to delicately avoid letting work contacts into your personal social networking sphere. Quoting from the page:

Q. A growing number of colleagues have requested to connect with you on social networking Web sites. You have mixed feelings about giving these professional contacts a window into your personal life. What should you do?

A. Proceed with caution. While it may seem harmless to establish virtual connections with your officemates, doing so might put you in an uncomfortable position at work, says Juliette Powell, who runs a career consulting business and wrote a book about social networking, “33 Million People in the Room.”

Social networking is “all about establishing boundaries,” she says. “If you have something online that you wouldn’t share openly with people in the office, you probably want to think twice about inviting them in.”

The article goes on to discuss the threats that mixing business and pleasure online can engender for employees today:

“Any time the camera comes out these days, there’s a chance the resulting photos will be on the Internet within hours,” says Nathan T. Wright, founder of Lava Row, a social media strategy firm in Des Moines. “If you’re going to have work people on these sites, you need to understand this threat.”

Dismissal is even possible if you post something unflattering about your employer in a status update or other feature that can be viewed by everyone on your network.

ReputationDefender Blog has covered the threat that employees face with decreased privacy on social networking sites.

Managing privacy settings is another key to controlling the work/ play boundary on sites like Facebook and MySpace, although consistency is the best practice when dealing with friend requests from the adjoining cubicle.

Q. If you wish to decline certain connection requests, what is the most polite approach?

A. Be honest and consistent. Rachel Weingarten, president of the Octagon Strategy Group, a consulting firm in New York, says employees who wish to avoid colleagues on certain social networking sites should respond to every request by explaining that they’d rather put all work contacts into one particular social network, or designate all social networking sites for connections made outside of work.

These sorts of policies must be applied equally, she says. “The last thing you want is to accept some requests but decline others, then have the people you’ve rejected find out they didn’t make the cut,” she says. In the world of modern office politics, she adds, “that’s about as bad as it gets.”

ReputationDefender encourages individuals to keep privacy concerns in mind when networking online and to educate themselves about how online behavior can lead to real world consequences- both positive and negative.

A recent article in Newsweek covers the online ordeals of the Catsouras family, who have been trying to manage unwanted photos of their daughter online.

This is a story about a photo—an image so horrific we can’t print it in NEWSWEEK. The picture shows the lifeless body of an 18-year-old Orange County girl named Nikki Catsouras, who was killed in a devastating car crash on Halloween day in 2006. The accident was so gruesome the coroner wouldn’t allow her parents, Christos and Lesli Catsouras, to identify their daughter’s body. But because of two California Highway Patrol officers, a digital camera and e-mail users’ easy access to the “Forward” button, there are now nine photos of the accident scene, taken just moments after Nikki’s death, circulating virally on the Web. In one, her nearly decapitated head is drooping out the shattered window of her father’s Porsche.

[SNIP]

The Catsourases are by no means the first to suffer at the hands of cyber-aggressors. But their story is unique in that it touches on so many of the ways the Web has become perverted: as an outlet for morbid curiosities, a space where cruel behavior suffers little consequence and an uncontrollable forum in which things that were once private—like photos of the dead—can go public in an instant. The case also illustrates how the law has struggled to define how legal concepts like privacy and defamation are translated into an online world.

ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik is quoted in the piece and the lack of legal precedent in the online arena is also discussed.

While the specifics of the Catsouras case are unique, the broader issue—of how current laws seem impotent when faced with the viral spread of malicious Internet content—is becoming a widespread concern. Until it was shuttered last year, a site called Juicy Campus stirred controversy by spreading rumors about college students’ alleged sexual escapades. Sites like DontDateHimGirl leak dirty allegations about unsuspecting men. And two Yale Law School alumnae have spent years going after the perpetrators of nasty gossip about them, posted on a legal-discussion board.

But while libel and slander are regulated by law in the real world, in the cyberworld almost anything goes. In 1996, Congress passed legislation—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—that immunizes Web sites from liability for the speech of individuals, under the rationale that companies like AOL shouldn’t be responsible for the actions of each user. As a consequence, victims of a damaged reputation have little legal recourse. A person could try to sue the individuals who post on a Web site—as the Yale women have done—but in the world of anonymous postings and shared public computers, just finding a person’s real name can be next to impossible. Even if you do identify them, and they agree to remove the content, it’s unlikely the content is contained to that Web site alone. “We have created a deck that is so stacked against private individuals who want to protect their name and privacy that you don’t even have a fighting chance,” says Fertik of Reputation Defender.

When employees first began using social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook at work, many employers worried that there would be a significant drop-off in productivity. While this is still a concern for some businesses, it turns out there are far greater risks to social networking on the job than just a few lost minutes.

According to research from Sophos, a UK-based Internet security firm, nearly two-thirds of businesses think their employees share too much information about their company online. Furthermore, one in five businesses fear security risks, such as spam or malware attacks, caused by social networking.

The problem with managing social networking threats is that it is very difficult to cut out employee access to social networks. Sure, companies can institute policies designed to limit social networking use, or even block access to web sites altogether. However, since social networking has become such an important part of our daily lives, many employees will find a backdoor way to sneak onto their Facebook profile anyway, which only amplifies the threat of downloading viruses. Plus, many companies rely on social networking to improve their core business functions, such as business development, brand management, and more.

Because websites like Facebook aren’t going anywhere soon, businesses should recognize their various benefits and threats. To this end, it is imporant for businesses to have a robust social networking policy that is both fair and accessible for employees. Additionally, businesses should maintain a strong anti-virus software and firewall technology to protect important company assets.

If you have any additional tips on ways companies can effectively manage employee social networking, please feel free to leave your comments on this post.

The New York Times has a well written and information rich piece on how to manage one’s Online Reputation. They specifically speak to the impact Google results can have on real world reputations and how to bury negative content with wanted information that is beneficial to a brand.

As anyone who has been Googled knows, unflattering results of your name or company — especially when listed in the first several pages — can run the gamut from embarrassing to damaging.

Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to remove content from Google. The search engine’s rule of thumb is to send you to the webmaster of the site, which often owns the content in question and has final veto power over its removal. As for Google profile, it runs at the bottom of United States name-query search pages, which means potentially damaging items will still be prominently highlighted in the search results.

If the webmaster doesn’t agree to have the negative content removed, your next best option is to bury it. Here are some quick, easy ways to do that.

Use your name to register your own Web site. I would also recommend a sub domain and a blog, again using your real name. WordPress and LiveJournal both have high Google PageRanks. Look into how to use title tags and headers to further optimize your results. Almost without exception, your Web site will show up as the first result in your name search.

Piggyback off Web sites whose pages rank high in Google. Social networking sites are great for this. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Naymz, Tumblr, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Vimeo, FriendFeed and Ning are great places to start. You don’t have to actively use these sites. Simply park your profile, add the necessary amount of content and make sure to adjust the settings to public view where appropriate so that your profile can be crawled and indexed by Google. Social sites are especially useful in pushing down negative content because some, like LinkedIn and Flickr, allow you to create a unique URL, like flickr.com/johnmiddleinitialdoe, which will further ensure that the site ranks high atop your name search.

Another option is to leave a comment on high-ranking blogs and Web sites using the same name.

These are all great pieces of advice and ReputationDefender encourages people to proactively take control of their online reputation.