I remember reading Popular Mechanics when I was a kid. (Maybe it was my brother who read it? I could be misremembering.) Anyway, this article from that venerable (launched in 1902!) magazine has some interesting comments on online privacy.
Here’s one tidbit, including a quotation from Daniel Solove, a leading light in the field of privacy law:
“Cloud-based social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace
push the privacy envelope even further, encouraging users to post and
share massive amounts of personal data that can be scooped up and
stored indefinitely. And in an increasing number of cases,
information that people willingly post about themselves online is
coming back to haunt them. “The problem is that teenagers, college
students and even some adults who ought to know better are not
thinking through the long-term consequences of putting up so much
personal information,” says Daniel Solove, author of The Future of
Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. “Today’s
reality is that once something is out in the public, it usually stays
there.”
and, perhaps a little unusually, an interesting quote from a computer scientist at the US Military Academy on the Milton Friedman “no free lunch” quality of social networking sites and similar pages:
“Free Web services aren’t free,” says Gregory Conti, computer scientist at the U.S. Military Academy. “We pay for them with
micropayments of personal information.”
And then finally a short note from PopMech itself:
None of these technologies ever truly feels like a trap until it’s too late—when your embarrassing photos are posted online by your angry ex, when your cellphone data becomes damning evidence against you in court, or when the ads delivered to your e-mail in box become disturbingly personal.
For perhaps the first time in Internet history, Facebook has served as the conduit for serving legal documents. After repeatedly failing to serve the papers in person, the law firm of Meyer Vandenberg convinced a judge in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court to allow them to use the popular social network to serve papers related to an unpaid debt.
Mark McCormack, the lawyer who came up with the idea, had this to say: “It’s somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant. It’s one of those occasions where you feel most at home with what you know and I myself have a Facebook account. We don’t know of any other lawyer who has used Facebook in this way, we got the idea ourselves in the course of looking at alternative methods of bringing the matter to the defendants’ attention.”
The couple at the heart of the matter failed to keep up repayments on a $150,000 (£44,000) loan they had borrowed from a mortgage provider. After numerous attempts to reach the couple, both through traditional means and through emails, the law firm was at their wits end when the couple missed a court appearance on Oct 3 of this year.
Frustration bred innovation, and Mr. McCormack had concluded that the couple had altogether vanished. “They weren’t available at their residence. They no longer worked at the place given in some documents as the last place of their employment,” he said. “The Facebook profiles showed the defendants’ dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists – and the co-defendants were friends with one another. This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a sufficient method of communicating with the defendants.”
McCormack went on to use his lawyer-y skills to try and convince the court that Facebook was an acceptable way to communicate with the couple, and the court agreed with the stipulation that the papers be sent via a private email, not be posted as a status update (You’ve Been Served!). While this is not the first instance of legal documents being officially served through electronic means, courts worldwide have been slow to embrace the idea of service of process through email service. With the Internet continually growing and people moving more of their lives online perhaps this trend will increase. If so, it only raises the question of which social network will become the Internet’s safe house.
Imagine your 92-year-old grandfather using the Internet. Now imagine that your 92-year-old grandfather is an aging Academy Award-nominated movie star. Congratulations, you just wrote a Reuter’s story (or a ReputationDefender blog post)!
We saw this story from Reuters detailing how Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas has gone all Web 2.0 and is using teh internetz to blog and keep in touch with his numerous MySpace friends (over 4000 according to the story). The piece highlights how Douglas, father of Michael Douglas (whom we love if for no other reason than he was in “The Game” and dropped through the ceiling of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco), is able to interact with people, bringing his personality to life through the written word. The blog also serves a purpose to promote Douglas’ recent memoir, “Let’s Face It” and permits him to “make full use of mood icons such as an animated cat with accompanying words like ‘creative’ and ‘contemplative,’” something that the publishing industry is loathe to let you do, even if Catherine Zeta Jones is your daughter-in-law.
It used to be not long ago that old folks were scared of the Internet and the tubes that it is comprised of. Who can blame them? Have you paid for a plumber lately? I can only imagine what he’d charge you to clean your cache out. It is interesting to see that the medium of blogs, in as much as they are unfiltered notes/essays/whatever, has become more user-friendly and a main-stream channel. We encourage people to get out there and be active on the Internet, define yourself, create your own space. And hey, if you have a book to push, this is just another new marketing channel.
Specifically, the article looks at the post-privacy reality of Facebook and notes that password protected information can still get online and affect one’s job prespects and digital street cred. It also looks at JuicyCampus, online gossip and the ease with which anonymous posting can ruin people’s names.
As I read through the pages, I was tense and apprehensive. I didn’t see any references to my close friends, but I did find a post specifically about the group of girls living in the housing unit next to me. It said where they lived, which is just creepy, and then the poster called them stuck-up, anorexic, and many expletives I don’t care to repeat here.
To quote a recent article in the Herald Tribune, “‘Legally, Juicy Campus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users, just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms,’ said Michael Fertik, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of reputationdefender.com, a service that helps clients remove defamatory material about themselves from the Internet…Juicy Campus, he said, ‘is not encouraging people to be themselves, it’s encouraging people to be the worst version of themselves.’”
The article concludes with the author deciding not to participate in anonymous gossip sites.
I’m going to exert as much willpower as I can to avoid Juicy Campus. I think the fact that it promotes prejudice and an anything-goes policy of ripping your classmates to shreds is enough to dissuade me from visiting the site often. That, and I don’t really want to know what my classmates are thinking about me. Some things are better left un-read.
What do you think? Is gossip a harmless part of the wired collegiate experience or is there something nefarious about talking trash about the student body online?
The Telegraph is reporting that the black market for stolen Facebook profiles is heating up in Britain. The stolen profiles are then used to spread viruses and malware through the popular social networking site.
The cyber thieves steal the account entry details from users before selling them on to gangs behind online fraud who in turn send viruses to other computer users.
These gangs send “spam” messages on to millions of other computer users, urging people to click on false video or photo links.
By clicking on the links, people’s computers become infected with spyware viruses that can track keystrokes and copy details such as passwords to online bank accounts.
Other profiles being sought by the gangs include login details for MySpace and internet phone company Skype.
The article also notes that identity theft and cyber crime spikes around the holidays when people shop online for presents. Online crime is up 500% since September, cyber security experts report.
“Whether you’re going online to use Facebook, or for banking or Christmas shopping, you should be aware that hacking and identity theft tends to increase at certain times of the year.”
It is clear that Facebook privacy is a growing concern for internet users today. MyPrivacy from ReputationDefender helps users keep their private data off the internet and away from identity thieves.
Mr. Benioff showed me a new application meant to help companies recruit new employees. A company’s workers would give permission to the company to run software that combs the profiles of all of their Facebook friends to find those who might fit open jobs.
[SNIP]
“We are able to take the information on Facebook, and empower you, the Facebook user, to do something you have not been able to do before,” he explained. “We are taking one database, your company’s job listings, and another database, all your Facebook friends and their profiles, and creating a third, the matches for these jobs.”
The article ends with a meme that ReputationDefender has been advancing for years: The information posted online can impact one’s real world reality, especially one’s job search.
“You have to be cautious what you put on your Facebook page because it will build someone’s database,” [Benioff]said.
ReputationDefender is the market leader in Online Reputation Management Solutions and looks forward to working with the future of online, cloud based identity.
Here’s how it goes down: Student has issue with teacher. Student goes online, utilizes social networking to vent frustration, encourages others to do the same. Page is discovered by school officials, student is suspended. Student sues for violation of right to free speech. Suspended for allegedly “cyberbullying” the teacher on Facebook during her senior year, a Florida teen then files suit against the school principal.
The group she created on popular social networking site Facebook specified her English teacher’s name, featured a photograph of the teacher and invited other students to “express [their] feelings of hatred.” Contrary to this invitation to group-vent, the group never got much Facebook love, and in fact, the student who created the page was derided in site comments and people stood up for the embattled educator. The teen later deleted the group, but her school suspended her for three days anyway, citing “disruptive behavior” and “Bullying / Cyber Bullying Harassment towards a staff member.”
The former student’s lawsuit alleges that the suspension has besmirched her otherwise good name and that it is “unjustifiably straining her academic reputation and good standing.” Filed on Monday, the student’s lawsuit puts forth that no profanities were used and there were no stated threats against the teacher. The school’s suspension notice went only so far as to say that the offense stemmed from “an inappropriate site regarding her teacher on Facebook.” The student demands that the suspension be removed from her record, which raises the question: What’s worse to the college application board; you got suspended for dissing your teacher online, or you sued the principal because you got suspended from school for dissing your teacher online?
This particular lawsuit is just the latest in a string of similar cases involving social networking sites and cyber bullying. Some schools have gone so far as to ban sites like MySpace and JuicyCampus altogether, and the state of Missouri recently enacted legislature to combat “cyberbullying” following the Megan Meier case.
The teen’s attorney, Matthew D. Bavaro, brought up an interesting point with regards to allowable speech when he posited “If Katie had praised the teacher, would she have been punished?” Bavaro also argued that his client’s suppression of speech, online and off, did not threaten bodily harm or advocate any illegal activity.
The New York Times is reporting that Facebook Connect is heralding the start of a social web that will increase the visibility and connectedness of online profiles. The move also brings up some privacy concerns as web users share more and more of their lives online.
Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.
Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.
Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.
Increased social networking opens up ad revenue potential, the piece goes on to say, and also brings up some privacy concerns as more of our digital lives are shared with others. The ability to connect with others and share experiences online continues to evolve and ReputationDefender will continue to provide updates on this situation.
Wanted: Good men and women to serve as a part of a historic Presidential administrative team. Must be a team player and able to handle pressure. Familiarity with deadlines essential, complex screening process applies. Equal Opportunity Employer.
On the heels of the Obama campaign being swept into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue there have been a lot of job slots opening up. Some are newly created, others are being vacated as the Bush administration heads out and Obama moves in. In both cases bodies are needed to fill the seats. But not just any bodies. Barack Obama is very aware of the Internet and how it can help and hinder a cause. Given this, it should come as no surprise to anyone that he is being VERY thorough about who gets a spot on the “O” team.
The process begins with a seven-page questionnaire that has been sent by the office of the President-elect to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts. The New York Times has commented that this process may be the most extensive (“some say invasive”) application ever.
And just what does those questions cover? 63 requests for personal and professional records, for starters, covering the applicants’ spouses and grown children as well. Good luck for speeders (sort of): traffic tickets with fines of less than $50 do not need not be reported, but anyone with a family member in the NRA take note, the application asks whether the applicant or anyone in their family owns a firearm.
While all of this is interesting from a political standpoint, what really caught our eye was the provision that all applicants must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages. As we have noted before on this blog, Obama is the Internet President, and he is covering his digital bases. The application goes on further to ask for applicants to “list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”
Of course the competition for a job in the White House has always been high, even if you weren’t gunning for Commander-In-Chief. The vetting process has been modified and added on to with each incoming administration, but Mr. Obama has taken his background hunts to a new level, especially with regards to applicants’ family members. The Obama camp stands behind their process, though, stating “President-elect Obama made a commitment to change the way Washington does business, and the vetting process exemplifies that.”
With the economy large in many Americans’ minds, the Obama campaign has sought to minimize any potential red flags in their hiring by avoiding hot topics like Freddie Mac and Fannie May. Question 18 of the Obama application asks the applicant whether “you, your spouse or any member of your immediate family” has been affiliated with either of the two failed mortgage institutions, as well as American International Group, Washington Mutual or any other institution getting a piece of the government bailout.
Remembering the trouble that Bill Clinton got into back in the early 90s, immigration status is questioned in the “Domestic Help” section that covers housekeepers, nannies, chauffeurs and yard-workers. Beyond that, applicants are requested to supply not only a résumé, but every résumé and biographical statement they’ve used in the last decade.
Oh yeah, and while you’re at it, the application requires the names of anyone an applicant has lived with, a chronological list of activities for which they were paid, documentation of real estate and loans over $10,000, and net worth statements submitted for loans. Furthermore, applicants must report all businesses that they and/or their spouses have been affiliated with and all gifts over $50 that they and their spouses have received from anyone other than close friends or relatives.
The catch all, though is at the end: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.”
The message is clear. While Barack Obama understood the power of the internet to raise money and spread his message of change, he is also aware of how the internet can adversely affect people in the digital age.
Two former officers of the police force in Durham, North Carolina are being investigated for alleged derogatory, and potentially racist, Web postings. While the details are not clear yet, the Chief of Police in Durham has stated that a “racial slur” is not the subject of the investigation, but this has done little to quell the outcry from civil rights groups.
The postings were allegedly on the officers’ MySpace or Facebook pages, according to the NAACP, which is calling on the local police to release copies. “We want to know if there will be transparency about those comments to the community and what disciplinary action if any will be taken against these officers,” Durham’s NAACP president Fred Foster Jr. told a local newspaper. “We believe that if these comments are against people of color, then it will be hard for those officers to serve and protect without prejudice and that they should not be allowed to wear the uniform representing public trust.”
By now stories of an Internet posting, meant to be private or not, coming back to haunt the poster are becoming quite commonplace. Seems that some people are just now learning of the reach of the Internet. Of course, any story like this, dealing with a betrayal of trust, abuse of power or display of bias receives even more attention when it is allegedly committed by a law enforcement officer (or any person in a real position of power, for that matter). Whether these charges prove to be true or not remains to be seen, but in the mean time remember that no one is immune from the Internet, and what you do there can (and most likely will) come back to you some day.
According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, 22% of employers already use social networking sites to evaluate potential candidates with an additional 9% planning to do so in the near future. Despite this fact, however, the percentage of employees who have modified their social networking profiles for potential employers is only 16%.This notable disparity shows that people’s awareness of their online identity is still lacking.
In analyzing this survey last week, ReputationDefender Blog offered its readers some advice on how to manage their reputations online and make a positive online impression. To continue along that same train of thought, here are a few more measures individuals can take to manage their online reputations.
From the CareerBuilder Article:
Do update your profile regularly
“Keep your profile updated, even when you’re not looking for a job,” recommends Patrice-Anne Rutledge, author of “The Truth About Profiting from Social Networking.” “Recruiters love to find top-notch passive job candidates and having a current profile can help you land your dream job when you least expect it.”
Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer
You know that griping about your current boss is a grave error during an interview, and it’s just as detrimental on your profile. Give hiring managers the idea that eventually you’ll be tarnishing their image if you part ways with the company and you’ll be crossed of their lists of candidates.
Also, if you’re currently employed, don’t forget any confidentiality and conduct agreements you’ve signed, Vergara reminds. You don’t want to violate your contract and end up jobless while you hunt for a new position.
Do join groups…selectively
One of the fun elements of networking sites is that you can connect with other people who share your same interests and have your quirky sense of humor. Thus you end up with virtual groups like “I Drink More Beer than Water.”
The silly group might seem harmless enough to you, but for a hiring manager trying to find a mature candidate for an open position, it doesn’t leave a great impression.
“No one is going to hire the consultant doing the keg stand or the lawyer that belongs to the anarchist forum,” says Patricia Sanchez-Abril, an expert on privacy and networking sites and professor of business law at the University of Miami. Instead opt for groups that show your professional aspirations or social involvement, such as an organization for advertising professionals or the charity you volunteer at.
Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed
If your boss knows you’re on the lookout for a new job, then by all means let it be known. However, if you’re attempting to keep your search below the radar, Vergara recommends restraint. Even if your boss isn’t your online friend, somebody can get the information back to him or her.
Do go on the offensive
If you want to use your networking profile as a tool, review the pictures you’ve uploaded, the personal information you’ve disclosed and any personal blogs or sites you’ve linked to. Don’t wait until you’re interviewing to go back and clean up your profile because the hiring manager probably already had a look.
“Get rid of your digital dirt,” says Rutledge. “A large percentage of recruiters ‘Google’ potential candidates to see what they can find out about them — both the good and the bad. Be sure that you don’t have any information on social networks or other sites that could make a recruiter decide to pass on you as a job candidate.”
Don’t forget others can see your friends
Unless you’ve opted to keep your friends list private, your friends can see the contacts you’ve made. So in addition to keeping your friends’ risque pictures and comments off of your profile, be cautious about whom you friend and when.
“Connecting to five people at Company XYZ after a day of vacation is a sure sign you are interviewing,” Vergara cautions.
Ultimately you need to remember that social networking profiles can mean potential bosses are evaluating you before you even apply for the job. You’d make sure to wear your best clothes to an interview, so polish your profile with the same care.
ReputationDefender encourages everyone to stay informed about best social networking practices and take control of their online identity.
ReputationDefender Blog has written extensively about how online activities can affect your personal life. It seems that meme is spreading. This video from College Humor is a perfect example of how our real world experiences are colored by our online activities. Also, as this post points out, you should never let your friends mess with your accounts.
Regular readers of the ReputationDefender Blog will be familiar with the teacher who was fired for her MySpace photos. Now ReputationDefender has learned of another cautionary tale for professionals in the digital age. A Cheerleader for the New England Patriots was sacked from the cheer squad following inappropriate photos on her Facebook account. Quoting from the MyCrimeSpace write up:
It seems that the 18-year-old Davis attended a college Halloween party. When one of the attendees passed out he received the age old tradition of being drawn on with Sharpies. Some of those drawings included swastikas and crude depictions of male genitalia. Davis made the no so smart move of posing with the victim with a Sharpie in her hand and posted the pictures on her Facebook. The Patriots organization didn’t particularly care for her behavior and released her.
Ensuring that your digital self is an accurate reflection of your real world self is a primary goal of Online Reputation Management. ReputationDefender offers Life Assurance for the Web TM by providing peace of mind to its customers. Proactively taking control of your personal brand online and controling your internet reputation are necessary steps in a connected, digital world.
Never one to let Virgin Atlantic have all the fun, now British Airways is investigating employees after they posted criticisms of passengers on a now-depopulated Facebook group called “London Gatwick Ground Staff.”
The Telegraph reports that a big complaint was passengers who put boarding passes in their mouths before handing them over to gate personnel–definitely something worth griping about. Customers were also called “smelly and annoying.” (Fliers from the US got a special shout-out for their “stupid American accents.”)
BA promises it “will be talking to the individuals concerned,” but the airline hasn’t gone so far as to say it will fire staff who made the comments. Still, as an airline that created its own social media site and maintains a Twitter account, you’d think they’d already have a policy in place regarding employee behavior online. We’re thinking something like, “Do whatever you want when you’re off the clock–as long as it isn’t completely embarrassing.”
Even though these employees haven’t been terminated, the fact that their online comments are being investigated by their employer is still cause for concern. Regular readers of the ReputationDefender Blog will realize that the content that people post online can have real world consequences (see, for example, the Facebook Bandit, who was sentenced to two years in jail because of his Social Networking Profiles).
Having an online presence that is an accurate reflection of yourself is vital in the information age. With employers, peers and business contacts all forming opinions based on what they find online, effectively managing one’s internet identity is a must. Modern day professionals and students must be proactive and control their personal brand online. The benefits of a strong online presence are immense for individuals as well as businesses. An accurate, relevant internet reputation is akin to Life Assurance for the InternetTM.
Jaunted.com has news today that 13 Virgin Atlantic employees were let go after they disparaged their employer and passengers on Facebook. Quoting from the page:
Fancy a spot of freedom of speech with your tea and crumpets? Jolly good, just watch it when you talk about your employer. A group of 13 cabin crew staff got sacked (I love that word) by Virgin Atlantic after company officials discovered that they had posted nasty things about customers to a semi-private discussion group on Facebook. The fancy-pants airline founded by Sir Richard Branson began an investigation on October 23 after passengers and other staff members came across the postings, which hilariously referred to certain customers as “chavs” and claim that some of the company’s 747s were infested with cockroaches.
It’s a shame to get kicked to the curb just for bitching about your job to your co-workers, since everybody who has ever had a job has done exactly that, but this crew should have known better. Facebook might lull people into a false sense of privacy, since groups are only open to members, but those sophisticated enough to work for an airline should know by now that anything you put into pixels could easily make it into the public domain.
The last point is particularly prescient. Readers of the ReputationDefender Blog are by now familiar with the case of the teacher who was fired over MySpace photos. There are also examples of people being prosecuted in court and having their MySpace profiles used as character evidence against them. In each case, and with the Virgin Atlantic case above, people are experiencing real world consequences that originate with their online activities.
Professionals, Students, Parents, Doctors, Lawyers and job seekers should be aware that others are forming opinions and making important decisions based on what they find online. Monitoring and managing one’s Online Reputation is a must in the digital age. Online Reputation Management is an exciting industry designed to help people from all walks of life present an accurate and current representation of themselves online. The ReputationDefender product suite monitors and protects individuals online and functions as Life Insurance for the Web TM. ReputationDefender encourages everyone to take control of their online identity and be proactive in crafting their personal internet brand.
Imagine your 92-year-old grandfather using the Internet. Now imagine that your 92-year-old grandfather is an aging Academy Award-nominated movie star. Congratulations, you just wrote 
Two former officers of the police force in Durham, North Carolina are being investigated for alleged derogatory, and potentially racist, Web postings. While the details are not clear yet, the Chief of Police in Durham has stated that a “racial slur” is not the subject of the investigation, but this has done little to quell the outcry from civil rights groups.
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