Think your boss has no idea what you are doing online? Think again. Randall Stross has an interesting piece in the New York Times titled “How To Lose Your Job on Your Own Time,” where he points out the growing trend of employees losing their jobs based on inappropriate or unprofessional online content. Stross notes that the nature of the internet grants increased visibility to off-the-clock activities and employers are taking an interest in what workers post online.

“Many companies are using the Internet to snoop on their employees. If you fail to maintain amorphous ‘professional’ standards of conduct in your free time, you could lose your job.”

He goes on to state that the courts are far behind the internet in this matter.

“‘Employment law in most states provides little protection to workers who are punished for their online postings,’ said George Lenard, an employment lawyer at Harris Dowell Fisher & Harris in St. Louis.”

With the lack of legal recourse available to workers, employees are finding that poorly chosen words or photos posted online can lead to termination. Last year, a woman lost her teaching credentials and was dismissed from her teaching position at a Pennsylvania High School when administrators found her MySpace profile photo.

The incriminating snapshot, taken off school grounds and after working hours is “surprisingly innocuous” yet still lead to life altering consequences. In it, the woman wears a pirate hat and holds a large plastic cup. She labeled the pic “drunken pirate” and school officials said that her posting the photo online constituted a breach of professional standards and promoted underage drinking. The terminated teacher, in turn, filed suit against her former employer. No trial date has been set.

As we have seen often of late, online identity management is now a key component of working in the digital age for professionals in any field. Reputation.com is the leader in Online Reputation Management.

If you’re a teacher, or you know someone who is, check out this article for Online Reputation Management and Social Networking Advice for Teachers.

J. Walter Thompson, the largest advertising agency brand in the United States and one of the best globally, charted “sturking” as one of its “Eighty Things to Watch in 2008.” Sturking, as defined by JWT, is a combination of “stalking” and “lurking” and is enabled by social networks. Yesterday, JWT and Reputation.com appeared on the same Fox Business segment, when Fox Business turned to Reputation.com and its Founder and CEO Michael Fertik for advice on how businesses and individuals can gain protection from sturking. For the purposes of this segment, JWT and Fox Business ranked sturking #1 in their Power Rankings. Check out the video below.

JWT has commented on Reputation.com in the past, like in this article, which appeared in AdWeek in late 2007.

We recently noted a story from WickedLocal.com in Massachusetts discussing the story of a 13-year-old girl named Julie. Using Internet messaging and emails, Julie gradually established a relationship with a boy she knew only as “Tom.” Over time Julie and Tom became closer, and Julie felt that she and Tom had a real connection. When Tom suggested that he and Julie be together in perpetuity, they decided to run away together to Reno, Nevada. Up to this point, Julie had never met Tom in “real life;” their exchanges had been exclusively online. The person Julie knew as Tom, the person who came to pick her up in a truck headed for Reno, was not a teenage boy at all. It turns out that Tom was actually a 56-year-old man who had been posing as a teenager to attract lonely girls like Julie.Fortunately, in this case, Julie’s parents noticed she had gone missing, alerted authorities and the truck was intercepted. Tom is now awaiting trial on kidnapping charges.

The Director of juvenile programs for Norfolk County District Attorney William Keating, was quoted as saying that a story like Julie’s often does not end well. “Cases like this are not solved in an hour like they are on ‘CSI Miami,’” said Daniel Feeney. “The myth TV shows says to kids is that adults will save the day, just like they see the guys on TV do. If a kid is taken by an Internet predator, the chances are great he or she will not be seen again, and he or she will disappear.”

Research has shown that teenage girls are targeted more often than boys, and children in Middle School are said to be particularly vulnerable because of social awkwardness commonly felt at that age. The combination of feelings of loneliness, having a perceived “outsider” status, and sensitivity to criticism make them prime targets for an opportunistic child predator.

This is a very funny and very true cartoon from a great website, The Joy Of Tech. These folks should have signed up for MyReputation!

Young people have embraced social media sites as part of their IRL lives and many are actively creating and sharing content online. 93% of teenagers are online, according to the Pew Research Project “Teens and Social Media,” released at the close of 2007, and nearly two thirds of online teens are creative content producers. Whether this content takes the form of blogs, photo journals, or personal sites, young people are actively creating content online, and as Generation Y grows up this trend seems likely to continue.