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.

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Milam County, Texas Has a Facebook Problem

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.

Three Words Website Goes Viral

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.

Group Defaces Facebook Memorial Page

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.”

Top 5 Privacy Violations of 2010

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.”

Privacy vs. Security in Internet Tracking

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.”