Entries Tagged 'Twitter' ↓

In today’s Quick Hits, we discuss law enforcement and social media, follow up on the case of the Facebook-addicted juror, and look at a case of stalking on Facebook (and why Facebook isn’t helping to stop it.)

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Cops Don’t Know How To Use Twitter

A new study by the Canadian Association of Police on Social Media reveals that many law enforcement agencies and individual law enforcement officers do not understand the proper way to use social media. According to the report, “21 percent don’t tweet, nine percent tweet personal opinions about crime or criminal justice, and three percent have tweeted in a way that could be interpreted as racist or sexist.” This information demonstrates how vitally important online reputation management is to law enforcement agencies and why they need to adopt and effectively implement intelligent social media policies.

Juror Punished for Facebook Message About Trial

A Michigan woman who was removed from a jury after defense attorneys showed the judge that she had publicly commented on the trial on her Facebook profile has been fined $250 and assigned a five-page essay on the sixth amendment by the trial judge. The woman had written that it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re GUILTY” on her Facebook page before the trial was fully finished. For her part, the woman recognizes her mistake and her attorney said the outcome was “appropriate.”

Can You Break Up With Your Facebook Friends?

In her “social netiquette” column, Bridget Carey explains why it’s important to occasionally go through your Facebook friends and delete the individuals you don’t know or don’t have any significant contact with. Carey also suggests a way to spare hurt feelings if you’re thinking of deleting someone you know in real life, but don’t interact with often. Using Facebook’s privacy controls, you can move people you don’t talk to, but don’t want to delete, into a separate group set-up to limit the amount of profile information they can see.

Mother of Three Stalked Online, Facebook Won’t Intervene

The Sydney Morning Herald has the story of a mother of three who has been the victim of a vicious Facebook stalker. For the last two weeks, the stalker has harassed the woman and her children with obscene and violent language and pornographic images. The incident began when the stalker hacked into the daughter’s Facebook account and began soliciting information about the family’s home address.

The mother of three says she contacted Facebook about the harassment and they informed her that they would shut down the account. Two hours later however, Facebook said they would be unable to follow through with her request. The woman has since filed a report with the police and an investigation into the harassment is ongoing.

Twitter Announces Plans to Log All Links Clicked by Users

Twitter has announced the roll-out of a singular URL shortening device, “t.co.” This long-expected development will allow Twitter to detect malicious links more effectively and generally improve security on the site. It will also allow Twitter to track and record all links clicked by Twitter users and store that information for future internal data mining. This latter development has made some privacy advocates nervous, but as CNET’s Declan McCullagh points out, there are several simple steps Twitter can take to alleviate these concerns.

In today’s Quick Hits, we learn what privacy harm means, how Paris police feel about Google Street View, and the meaning behind the heavily encoded texting language of teens.

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Free iPad Scams Hit Facebook and Twitter

Twitter and Facebook have both become inundated in recent weeks by scammers promising free iPads to users. Once a scammer gains access to a user’s social media account, they send out messages to user’s friends containing a link to better-gifts.net. According to Reuters, “that Web site asks for personal information, and then directs the user to a variety of promotional offers from legitimate companies such as Netfilx, the Doubleday Book Club, and Columbia House DVD.Online marketing programs pay cash for Web traffic, and hackers have found that by phishing victims and then using that information to break into legitimate Twitter and Facebook accounts, they can earn money.”

NYT Tech Talk Podcast: Fighting Over the Facebook Movie

In this week’s New York Times Tech Talk Podcast, part of the show focuses on The Social Network, the allegedly fictionalized upcoming movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the origins of Facebook. The show specifically touches on Facebook’s vehement disagreements with the producers of the film over its subject matter and curious interpretation of Facebook’s early history.

Internet Expert Ryan Calo Explains “Privacy Harm”

In a Q&A for the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Calo, senior research fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University Law School, attempts to define “Privacy Harm,” or what constitutes a harmful invasion of privacy versus something that is merely distasteful. In his thoughtful responses, Calo mentions subjective privacy harm versus objective privacy harm and the difference between a “privacy violation” and a “privacy harm.”

Google Street View Car Stopped and Searched in France

Google is operating Street View cars in France again, but not without a healthy bit of scrutiny. From BusinessWeek: “A car used by Google Inc. to collect data for its Street View mapping service was stopped and searched yesterday near Paris, less than a week after France’s privacy regulator criticized the company.The inspection was a result of Google resuming photographing French streets before officials decided whether the company complied with orders to limit Street View’s data collection, said Yann Padova, secretary general of the National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties.”

Understanding Teen Texting

Kids and teens go to great lengths to hide their digital conversations from their parents. This article from CNN discusses some of the common Internet lingo that teens use when texting or chatting with friends and offers a handful of resources for parents to learn more about this ever-evolving and complex shorthand web language.

In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the new “dislike” button scam, privacy accusations against Clearspring Technologies, the controversial photos a former Israeli soldier posted on Facebook, and the interesting tweets North Korea has been posting.

Facebook ‘dislike’ button scam spreads virally

In today’s Quick Hits we talk about Facebook advertising, how Twitter rallied around a dying boy, and what’s going on in the world of privacy and politics.

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Facebook Advertisers Increased Spending by 10 and 20-fold

According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s biggest advertisers have increased spending by at least 10-fold in the past year, with some advertisers increasing their spending by more than 20-fold. With Facebook’s steady user growth and high-level of user engagement, the social networking website is the ideal vehicle for delivering targeted advertising. Now that companies have seen how effective advertising can be on Facebook, it is no surprise that they are increasing their presence on the site. The question is, as more and more advertisers and more and more users flock to Facebook, will the company keep privacy at the forefront or will it be put on the back-burner for revenue?

Terminally Ill Boy’s Plight Stirs Twitter, Earns Condemnation for Airline

A 10-year-old Canadian boy fighting a terminal form of Muscular Dystrophy flew to New York to fulfill his wish of seeing Central Park. Unfortunately, during his trip, Air Canada accidentally damaged his electric wheelchair, which is the only way the boy can get around. To compound the problem, Air Canada was not readily available to replace the damaged chair immediately, leaving he and his mother and aunt essentially stranded. However, the story took a positive turn thanks to the power of Twitter.

Many Twitter users were already aware of Tanner’s plight from a previous Twitter fundraiser to help him pay for his trip. When those same Twitter users saw the trouble he was having, they sprung into action to try and find a replacement wheelchair. Eventually, a company stepped up to donate the essential equipment, thus saving the weekend. While that company has since earned raves on Twitter, Air Canada has been roundly criticized for not doing enough to help the family. Though this story has a happy ending for the time being, Air Canada’s inattention to public sentiment online may cost the company business and is an important reminder that brand monitoring online is essential to running a successful business.

Woman Robbed by Facebook Friend

One woman in New Albany, Indiana, recently learned the hard way that some Facebook friends aren’t friends at all. After posting an update saying she and her fiancee were going out, the woman came home to find her apartment had been robbed. Security camera footage later showed the culprits: two men, one of them the woman’s Facebook friend. The thieves planned the robbery because of the information she shared on Facebook, showing why it is important to never share when you are leaving your home in a public forum.

Police Use Facebook to Crack Underage Alcohol Sales

In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, all of the underage kids knew where to go to buy alcohol without an ID. It was common knowledge on Facebook. Of course, that meant the police knew where to go too. This local news story details how the police tracked down underage drinkers via their Facebook accounts and followed them to a local liquor store where they busted several more teens and issued citations to the store owners.

Government Internet Privacy Regulation Round-Up

Government and technology reporter Alex Howard has an excellent wrap-up of the various online privacy issues being debated on Capitol Hill. In his exhaustive analysis, Howard touches on the Wall Street Journal’s recent privacy coverage, last week’s Senate committee hearing on behavioral advertising, and how the FTC fits into the privacy regulation puzzle.

In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a company that can predict the future, why Facebook may not be as social as we think, and how Bill Cosby feels about Twitter death rumors.

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Does Facebook Divide Us or Unite Us?

Ethan Zuckerman, a Senior Researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center, recently gave a TED talk on social media and whether websites like Facebook are uniting us or dividing us as a society. Zuckerman believes that while Facebook presents the opportunity to connect across a broad spectrum of cultures, it more frequently reinforces existing local relationships, turning users into “imaginary cosmopolitans.” It’s an interesting perspective.

Fair Political Practices Commission Wants Harder Rules on Internet Endorsements

The Fair Political Practices Commission of California is taking a hard look at social media endorsements. According to the LA Times, the group recently issued a report that calls for Internet-based campaign material to be regulated in the same way that traditional mailers and other forms of advertising are regulated. One particularly important issue is determining a way to see if someone online has been paid to post messages on Twitter or on Facebook on behalf of the politician’s campaign.

Google and CIA Invest in Company That Predicts Future

Can Google predict the future? Maybe not, but they are investing in a company that is working on it. According to ABC News, Google, along with the CIA, are investing in a company called Recorded Future. Recorded Future uses what it calls a “temporal analytics engine ” to look “at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.” They then use that information to predict when the event will happen based on the “momentum” of the discussion.

Both Google and the CIA have good reason to be interested in this small company, but the fact that the pair are investing at the same time has some privacy advocates nervous. In light of Google’s recent Wi-Fi snooping scandal, the company’s credibility is not as strong as it once was.

Bill Cosby Victim of Fourth Twitter Death Hoax

Bill Cosby is not dead. He said so himself on Twitter and Larry King Live. The 73 year-old comedian is a popular target for Internet death rumors, this was his fourth, and he’s getting tired of it. Echoing a complaint shared by many celebs who have been claimed dead, Cosby asked the person behind the rumor to stop and said “To the people behind the foolishness, I’m not sure you see how upsetting this is.”

Understanding Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 Privacy Decision

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an exhaustive report detailing how Microsoft intentionally minimized privacy protections in Internet Explorer 8 to ease concerns among Internet advertisers. If you haven’t caught up on the original Journal story, Ars Technica has a concise recap that explains just how the decision was made internally at Microsoft.