In today’s semi-shortened Quick Hits, we talk about California’s new law banning online impersonation, whether or not 2010 was the year that privacy bit the bullet, and a U.S. District Court ruling on copyright that clarifies image use for Twitter users.
A new California law written, by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), banning online impersonation goes into effect this Saturday. The new law makes the offense a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. The law was written in response to growing concern over online impersonation and cyberbullying. The law is not perfect, however, as social media is constantly evolving and the law is not precise in defining criminal online impersonation, a fact that Simitian’s office acknowledges in this article form the San Jose Mercury News. Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik talked about the online impersonation law in a special segment with the BBC in September.
In an article for the BBC, Jane Wakefield looks back on 2010 and considers whether mistakes by companies like Facebook and Google indicate the year that personal privacy died, or rather awakened Internet users to the importance of personal privacy for the first time. The article also touches on the subjects of net neutrality and online piracy.
In a recent court ruling, U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley ruled that images shared on Twitter may not be used by third parties unaffiliated with the website without permission from the individual who took the picture. The case, which affirms standing copyright laws, revolved around a Twitter user’s attempts to sue news agencies that had used his images of the Haiti earthquake in their stories without proper attribution or permission. The news agencies argued that they didn’t require his permission, because the image was shared freely on a social networking website.
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the top privacy problems of 2010, how Facebook became a major drain on productivity for one government office, and why one marketer thinks that people are confusing privacy and security in the Internet tracking debate.
After several government computers were infected with viruses in Milam County, Texas, Judge Frank Summers asked the county’s IT Department do check out the computers. The results were surprising. According to the IT study, the average Milam County City employee spent approximately 5 hours and 15 minutes of every work day on Facebook. That’s more time than they actually spent working. We often talk about the privacy and reputation implications of using Facebook incorrectly, but there is also the issue of productivity, as evident in the Milam County case.
ThreeWords.me was bound to go viral. The website, which invites anonymous commenters to leave three words describing the user, appeals not only to our collective vanity, but also to our desire to rate and score people. This article from TechCrunch discusses the app and its 18-year-old creator in more detail, but one has to wonder if reducing someone’s entire personality into only three words is a smart thing to do in the Google age. What if your Three Words page was exploited to say you were smelly, ugly, and stupid? You certainly wouldn’t want that showing up in your Google results.
Students in Fort Smith, Arkansas have become the latest victims of a cruel game where Internet trolls take over a Facebook memorial page for a deceased student and litter it with pornography and other disturbing imagery. A member of the group that defaced the page spoke with news reporters saying that he and his partners were paid for the attack and that they did it to “[teach] young kids today how to deal with all these things on social networking sites.”
In an interesting column for the Huffington Post, Jeffrey Evans, the CEO of TigerText, offers his thoughts on the top five biggest privacy violations of 2010. Touching on the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, the ongoing Wikileaks saga, and other major stories from the year, Evans writes that “by any standard, 2010 was not a good year for privacy rights.”
In a column for the Internet marketing blog ClickZ.com, marketing executive Andrea Fishman argues that restrictive legislation on Internet tracking will harm the advertising industry and hurt consumers. Fishman writes that rather than focus on privacy concerns, companies should be made to focus on security. As Fishman writes, “It’s time to focus on what is at the heart of most user concerns: keeping the Web and digital interactions safe and secure. Protect credit card data better? Sure. Restrict sites for younger audiences? Absolutely. But when it comes to behaviors and advertising – let people decide how much they want to share and what they are willing to trade for their information.”
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Twitter celebrity death hoaxes, how scammers are using Facebook to dupe victims, and three interesting legal cases.
Comedian and actor Adam Sandler became the latest in a long line of celebrities to be proclaimed dead on Twitter. The popular microblogging website, which topped 190 million users this past summer, is widely celebrated for spreading breaking news quickly. Unfortunately, the site is also known for spreading false rumors, as the “Retweet” function allows users to spread stories quickly without necessarily verifying them.
Demonstrating the complicated and litigious nature of cyberbullying cases, two high school students in Southwest Missouri have “filed a lawsuit claiming their constitutional rights were violated when they were removed from a high school cheerleading squad for alleged cyberbullying.” The lawsuit claims “a breach of their rights to free speech, due process, freedom of association and privacy.”
This article in the Kansas City Star talks about a sneaky new class of cybercriminals on Facebook, who use the credibility of the site to pose as real users in order to scam people out of money. Quoting from the article, “cybercriminals on Facebook today come cloaked as real friends sending messages asking you to wire them money in a foreign country or posting a note on your wall with a funny video that’s really a dangerous link. The scammers are smart, sneaky and hoping you fall for their tricks.” The article also goes into detail on how Facebook and law enforcement officials are trying to stay ahead of these scammers, but wisely recommends that the best away to avoid them is to use caution and common sense online.
Two years ago, Katie Evans was suspended from her high school after writing that her AP English teacher was “the worst she ever had” on her Facebook page. The school claimed that Evans’ message constituted cyberbullying, while Evans believed that her comments were well within the limits of free speech and that her suspension was unjustified. After her high school principal failed to have her case thrown out in court, the school reached an agreement with Katie that agreed to pay her $15,000 in lawyer fees and $1 in nominal damages.
According to multiple reports, “Apple and five other companies have been accused of allowing applications on the iPhone and iPad to transmit users’ personal information to advertising networks without consent,” according to a recently filed legal complaint. The lawsuit, which was filed just before Christmas, alleges that the devices’ Unique Device Identifiers, or UDIDs, gathered and gave away more information than users approved.
In today’s Quick Hits, we share a segment from Newshour, talk about the big privacy stories from 2010, and discuss the story of a nursing student who was dismissed from school after posing for a picture with a…placenta.
On this episode of the long-running PBS news program Newshour, “Ray Suarez speaks with FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Mike Zaneis, general counsel of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, about the state of Internet privacy practices, concerns and proposed regulation.”
In an article for Business Insider, Nicholas Carlson writes about “Mark Zuckerberg’s worst nightmare,” spammers using Facebook’s phototag system to spread illegal ads throughout the site. Business Insider shows a sample of phototag spam, which claims to offer users a free iPad. Facebook’s relative lack of spam has been one reason the site has shown such impressive growth. If Facebook becomes inundated with junk, it could see a decline similar to MySpace.
CNET’s Declan McCullagh takes a look back at 2010 and the many privacy issues that concerned Web surfers during the year. Just a few of the stories McCullagh brings up in his look back include AT&T leaking user data, Facebook app developers selling user data to third parties, and Google facing legal challenges over its accidental Wi-Fi snooping.
While Facebook has made it much easier for users to control the data that they share with third-party applications, if you are still using an app from over a year ago there is a chance that it still has full access to your Facebook data and your friends’ Facebook data. Because of this, it is important to check over your apps to see how much info you’re sharing. If there’s a newer version of the app, you should reinstall it.
It’s an admittedly gross headline, but it’s perfectly accurate. Several nursing students were recently removed from classes after they snapped photos of themselves posing with a placenta they had been studying as part of their course work. Interestingly, the students asked the teacher of the class if the pictures would be okay on Facebook, and the teacher implied that they would be. Sometime later, however, an administrator at the school called the students into a meeting and informed them that they were dismissed from the program.
One of the students is suing the school, claiming that she was not given a formal hearing. Before filing suit, however, the student apologized for the photo saying that she had deleted her Facebook account because she “cannot afford a tool that tempts me to remove any deeper thought behind my actions.”
2010 was quite a year for social media, Internet privacy, and online reputation management. In the last year, we saw Facebook top 550 million users, Google face lawsuits for snatching Wi-Fi data, and Congress debate the merits of Internet tracking in online advertising. Now, as we sit on the cusp of 2011, it’s important that we not only take a moment to look back at the year that was, but also to the future.
In the age-old tradition of putting your best foot forward for the New Year, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik has taken stock of the Internet landscape and put together a list of five reputation management resolutions that everyone should work toward in 2011. Check out Michael’s tips in the video and below, and feel free to chime in with your own New Year’s resolutions in the comments.
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1. I will think before I post, “Do I want my mom, healthcare provider, insurer, < INSERT ANYONE > reading this?” Before you expose any revealing or personal information online, consider your audience. Health care providers, financial and insurance institutions, business partners and many more are following your every search, tweet, post and “like” in order to decide how you’ll be rated, priced or targeted. Think twice before blogging about your New Year’s escapades or becoming a FourSquare Mayor of your local clinic.
2. I will be a stealthy surfing ninja. It’s time to enter ninja-stealth mode. Know that you are being tracked online, and that currently, consumers aren’t protected by regulation or industry. Here’s the scenario: We think that we’re getting a free lunch online, but even though a site is free, it doesn’t mean you’re not paying; if a site is free, “you” are the product. Companies collect information about “you the consumer” online in order to develop the most robust and data-rich digital dossiers. The more bits and bytes they can collect, the higher the worth. Take control over your online searches by entering ninja mode and surfing anonymously. Reputation.com offers solutions to remove individuals from being tracked online.
3. I will do an online cleanse. Do you really need 2,356 Facebook friends or a massive Twitter following? Which databases does your personal information appear in? Which outdated social networks show up in your Google search? It’s important to be aware of all the mentions and connections you have online. Decide which content you would like to be representative of you and which information should not be revealed (i.e. home addresses, DOB, telephone numbers). Resolve to take control of how you appear online by beginning the New Year with an Internet detox.
4. I will not slam < INSERT ANYONE > online. In 2010 we saw the negative and often tragic repercussions of online slamming and mudslinging. Cyberbullying took on extreme levels, at times more akin to cybertorture. On the business side, countless people lost their jobs as a result of tweets and posts that were not so well thought out. If your boss were within earshot, would you whine about how underappreciated you are or how you’re planning to quit? Probably not. Comments are even more loud and permanent on the web. Internet attacks and slams are not productive or helpful to anyone; resolve to play nice online this year.
5. I will not overshare. Oversharing online has reached what can only be the zenith — it must get better from here! Oversharing runs the gamut from harmless and banal Facebook updates (“Fido ate his biscuit!!!!”) to compromising and damaging tweets (“My boss is an @#%). While the impact of oversharing may not be felt immediately, remember the Internet never forgets and the triumphs of today may end up the tragedies of tomorrow.
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