Entries from April 2009 ↓

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MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets have picked up on the Cisco Fatty story that involves a woman getting fired for her twitter post. Quoting from the page:

Why waste valuable social networking hours getting yourself “Facebook fired,” when Twitter allows you to humiliate yourself quickly, and in 140 characters or less?

A recent tweet by one would-be Cisco employee proves that when it comes to placing a permanent black mark on your resume via the Internet, Twitter is now the tool of choice. To illustrate, here’s the tweet the now Web-infamous “theconnor” shared with the world:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

It wasn’t long before Tim Levad, a “channel partner advocate” for Cisco Alert, shared this open response:

“Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.”

Was “theconnor’s” job offer rescinded? Nosy netizens have yet to suss that out — but they’re doing their darndest to make “theconnor’s” life miserable in the meantime. It didn’t matter that “theconnor” almost immediately set his Twitter account to private and deleted all information from a home page. It was already too late.

Twitter is a great tool to connect people and ReputationDefender supports the emergeant micro-blogging platform. Users should be aware that potential employers are viewing online messages and that the material they post online can both help and hurt their online reputation.

The Huffington Post is reporting that Courtney Love has been sued over some of her online posts.

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Some of Courtney Love’s online rants are now in a Los Angeles court.

A fashion designer’s libel and breach of contract lawsuit against the singer includes what she calls several “menacing and disturbing” statements posted on the Internet.

Austin, Texas-based Dawn Simorangkir (Sim-or-AHNG-ker), also known as Boudoir Queen, says Love never paid her for work done. She filed the lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The suit cites remarks from Love’s Twitter and MySpace pages, and in the feedback section of Etsy.com. It said Love called Simorangkir a “nasty lying hosebag thief” and accused her of being a drug addict and a prostitute.

Phone messages left for Love’s publicist Thursday and Friday were not immediately returned.

ReputationDefender will keep you posted as events unfold and ask that internet users refrain from calling one another “nasty lying hosebag thiefs.”

In case you didn’t already know, Twitter is the latest “it” fad in the world of social media. From Demi Moore’s suicide prevention tweeting to the news of a potential Google-Twitter merger, it seems that not one week goes by without a major news story about the popular microblogging service.

Unfortunately, it isn’t all wine and roses at Twitter. Since the service emerged in 2006, one of the consistent complaints against it has been the ease with which individuals can set up phony accounts in someone else’s name. With such a large volume of users, it is impossible for Twitter to monitor each individual sign-up for validity. This means that someone could send out hundreds of tweets under your name, before you caught on. That’s what happened to Televangelist Robert H. Schuller, whose Twitter problem was discussed in a recent article at MSNBC.com.

From the article:

Televangelist Robert H. Schuller has reached millions worldwide with his weekly “Hour of Power” TV broadcasts, but when it comes to the Internet, he had a high-tech headache: an online impostor.

When Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral megachurch, recently tried to set up an account on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter.com, he discovered another user masquerading as himself.

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Schuller’s impersonator — who remains unidentified — seemed to know a lot about that history and the preacher’s life, said Nason, the spokesman. The impostor said in his early tweets that he was Schuller’s assistant, but then went on to say he was Schuller himself and even talked about the preacher’s wife, Nason said.

“The content seemed fairly normal for someone like Dr. Schuller to say,” Fayer said. “But in the future you don’t know how they’re going to use that. What if they start asking people to send money and say, ‘Send money to X,Y,Z’?”

The rest of the article details several other prominent phony Twitter accounts including a fake Stephen Colbert and a fake Tina Fey.

While it may not seem like a big deal to some, it is important to note that Reverend Schuller is a very prominent individual with a PR staff dedicated to catching issues like this. For the average person, it could be months before a Twitter fraud is exposed. That is why it is more important than ever for individuals to take full control of their image online and be proactive in Online Reputation Management.

The cynic in me wonders why we are surprised at yesterday’s report, covered here in New York Times, that 94% of all email passed through the Internet is spam.  After all, aren’t we all confronted with inboxes bloated with email that’s clearly unwanted?  Here’s a snap shot of my junk folder in an email account that I use exclusively for “trapping” and analyzing spam:

You’ll notice that I have managed to train the folder to exclude most pernicious types (porn, ED pills, etc.) of emails, but there’s still a glut of permission based marketing emails in there.  This means that somehow, somewhere along the way, I have granted that advertiser (or one of their affiliates) permission to contact me — probably without my really knowing it.

Here at Rep Def I work with our MyPrivacy team on the best way to unravel these permissions and make sure that the user has *true power* to control the way he or she is contacted.  I’ll try to come back here today to post some of the best tips for proactively limiting these types of emails.

We’ve already made huge strides on the problem of telephone privacy, and more recently started to address unwanted direct mail.  I’ll bet on our crew to figure out email, too.