Teachers and the Internet often make for an explosive mixture. Here at Reputation.com, we’ve talked about teachers who were fired for their Facebook profiles, MySpace pictures, and more. Today, the Huffington Post has the story of another teacher who is in trouble over her online actions.
According to the Huffington Post, “Pennsylvania teacher Natalie Munroe was suspended last week after posting profanity-laced rants online which called her students ‘out of control’ and ‘disengaged, lazy whiners.’” Munroe’s school is considering firing her permanently, but is still investigating the incident completely before making a decision.
From what I can gather, Munroe’s blog was written on her own time and contained her own personal opinions, which is why many teachers are siding with her over the suspension. Clearly, however, directing profanity against her students in a public forum such as a blog demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of understanding regarding proper online reputation management.
Interestingly, Munroe refuses to acknowledge that she’s done anything wrong. In an appearance on Good Morning America today, Munroe defended her blog and her right to say whatever she wants about her students and co-workers online. Check out the segment below.
Whether you side with Munroe on this issue or not, we can all agree that many teachers are in desperate need of online reputation management help. Because they are tasked with teaching our children, teachers are held to a higher standard of behavior than most other professionals. That means that even the slightest misstep online can mean major trouble.
In today’s Quick Hits, a new study links Facebook and stress, one privacy expert worries about “Do Not Track” legislation, and several new scams hit the social web.
Privacy expert Chris Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Law & Technology, wrote an interesting op-ed last week for TechPolicy.com. In it, Hoofnagle talks about potential problems that the FTC may have in enforcing “Do Not Track” privacy legislation. Hoofnagle makes the good point that many consumers thought “Do Not Call” was a failure because, while it stopped people from receiving sales calls, it didn’t stop people from receiving calls from politicians and non-profit organizations. Because of a failure to explain what kind of calls were filtered, the credibility of the effort was hurt. Hoofnagle argues the same thing could happen with “Do Not Track” if the word “track” is equated with the word “advertise.”
A video of a reporter having what appears to be a mini-stroke (her station said she’s fine) has become a viral hit on the Internet. While most people have been debating the health of the woman, others have decided to use the video’s popularity to stage a scam. AllFacebook.com is warning Facebook users to avoid clicking on an app titled “Reporter Stroke.” Facebook users who install the app will be exposed to malware which links users to a marketing survey.
Could having too many friends on Facebook be causing you stress? According to a study of 200 students by Dr. Kathy Charles of the Edinburgh Napier University, social pressure to be involved in Facebook and maintain a high level of contact with a high number of friends was shown to cause “considerable Facebook-related anxiety, with only very modest or tenuous rewards.”
Mahwah, New Jersey, Police Chief James Batelli had some strong words for parents in a recent news report. Advising parents to use spyware to monitor their children’s actions online, Batelli said, “”If it means buying an $80 package of software and putting it on and seeing some inappropriate words you don’t want your child to say. Then that’s part of society.” In a sense, Batelli is right. It is extremely important for parents to be aware of what their children are doing. However, transparency is also important. Kids who discover they are being spied on will likely craft better ways to hide their online actions, potentially making it harder for parents to intercede in the case of a reputation problem.
Do you hate dealing with certain Facebook friends, but don’t want to take the step of deleting them completely? Business Insider offers some advice on how to filter out updates from Facebook friends without them knowing. If you’re worried about hurting someone’s feelings, these tips could be a useful way of deleting them without actually deleting them.
Major General Michael Dubie, the head of the Vermont National Guard, recently became the victim of an online impersonation scheme. According to Vermont Public Radio’s report, Dubie is “warning people across the world to beware that someone is using his name and photographs of him as part of Facebook and Skype frauds. The guard says at least three people – in Canada, Taiwan and Germany – have responded to pleas from someone they believed to be Major General Michael Dubie. A woman from Toronto tells the Associated Press she wired more than $3,000 to a London address believing she was helping Dubie pay to ship money to Canada from Iraq.”
Don’t believe what you read on Twitter. Rock and roll star and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger is not dead. While the 67-year-old rocker may look like a corpse, according to the International Business Times, he’s alive and strutting.
Jagger is just the last in a long line of celebrities to fall victim to the dreaded Twitter death hoax and he certainly won’t be the last. In recent months, a Twitter hoax claimed that actor Adam Sandler died. In 2009, Scrubs star Zach Braff was declared dead online, leading the actor to put out a funny YouTube video addressing the rumors directly.
Twitter is an amazing service because of how it allows people from across the world to connect and communicate en masse. In some cases, this gives people the tools to help overthrow dictators as seen in the unprecedented Egyptian uprising earlier this month. In other cases, however, it breeds a culture of irresponsibility where people pass on information without verifying the facts first.
So again we say, Mick Jagger is not dead. Don’t get fooled by Twitter hoaxes! Next time you see a celebrity death rumor online, do yourself a favor and check to see if the information is accurate before clicking retweet.
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about how Twitter helped ruin the surprise of this year’s Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition. Also, two privacy experts talk about teens on Twitter and why they think it’s not that big of a deal.
After Connecticut state Representative Kim Rose became the victim of a fraudster on Facebook, she appealed to Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen to help her out. Now Jepsen is putting pressure on Facebook to talk about the company’s fraud prevention efforts. Specifically, Jepsen is asking Facebook “to provide information on how the site detects and disables fraudulent accounts.” In Rose’s case, someone set up an account in her name and then requested $650 from her friends. Rose allegedly reported the fraud to Facebook “at least a dozen times,” but said the site took “too long” to do anything about the issue.
In the first of a multi-part blog series for Fast Company, David Lavenda discusses Internet privacy, data ownership, and “the right to be forgotten.” In his post, Lavenda writes about the many barriers leading to consumer data control, including unclear data ownership rights, the lack of a comprehensive consumer privacy law, and companies that value information more than consumer rights. In an upcoming post, Lavenda will explore some of the solutions to these problems.
In another example of how the speed of social media is disrupting traditional marketing efforts, this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover was leaked on Twitter after an office worker snapped a photo of it on a temporarily uncovered billboard. The cover was supposed to be revealed on The Late Show with David Letterman.
Privacy experts and academics Alice Marwick and danah boyd recently co-wrote a column in The Guardian arguing that people who are worried about teens online should give them the benefit of the doubt. Writing that, “not all teens use Twitter, and those who do don’t all use it in the same way,” the authors suggest that “what matters is not whether or not teens are speaking in public, but how we support them as they try to learn how to responsibly navigate the networked public spaces that are central to contemporary life.”
This week in San Francisco, the RSA Conference celebrates its 20th anniversary as one of the world’s most prominent information security events. Over the course of the week, hundreds of experts from a variety of different sectors will meet to discuss the latest developments in information security and online data privacy.
On Wednesday, February 16th, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik will appear as a guest on one of RSA’s most interesting and pertinent panels. The discussion, entitled “Top Privacy Risks for Organizations and Consumers,” will focus on the rapidly emerging threats challenging organizations and consumers with regard to managing sensitive data online.
Alongside Michael Fertik, the panel features a number of additional privacy experts including,
Janet F. Chapman, Vice President of Privacy and Manager, Corporate Compliance at Union Bank
Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley
David Gorodyansky, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder off AnchorFree
The panel will be moderated by Demetrios Eleftheriou, Senior Privacy Counsel EMC Corporation.
Here’s the official description of the panel from the RSAC website.
“Privacy and data security issues continue to increasingly occupy the headlines and cause many headaches for privacy and data security professionals and unassuming Internet users in the U.S. and abroad. The panel will discuss some of the latest developments in data protection, including, among other issues, the recent FTC Privacy Report, deep packet inspection, digital security and social media. The panel will share what this all means for organizations and consumers and, beyond regulation and tighter policing, how organizational landscapes must shift to incorporate new privacy concerns.”
If you’re attending the RSA Conference this year, check out “Top Privacy Risks for Organizations and Consumers” on Wednesday at 8:30AM in Orange Room 308.
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