In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about an amusing (and embarrassing) new website, how some parents are tracking their kids online, and the steps that Rep. Anthony Weiner has taken to distance himself from a Twitter hack.
Satire is an especially tricky form of comedy, but it’s one that the writers at humor newspaper The Onion have perfected. In fact, they’re so good at it, that some people actually think headlines in The Onion are real. The new Tumblr blog Literally Unbelievable takes advantage of these errors by posting instances where people commented on the headlines assuming they were real. The result is quite funny, and is yet another demonstration of why it pays to think before you post anything on Facebook.
A new U.K. survey shows that “parents are sending an average of 312 emails and 600 text messages every year to keep track of their children.” The research, from National Family Week, also showed that 20% of parents said “the best place to find out what their children were doing was on social networks, such as Facebook.” Actively monitoring one’s child online is an important step in helping he or she curate a positive online reputation and defend himself or herself from cyberbullying. However, moderation and discretion is also important.
If you’ve ever Googled your name, you might be surprised to see an ad pop up inviting you to learn more about yourself. Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill recently experienced this phenomena and decided to investigate. In an interesting article, Hill talks to people-search website Intelius about its practice of taking out ads based on people’s names. Hill also investigates Google’s policies on advertising and discovers that ads in people’s names may go against the company’s stated policies.
Rep. Anthony Weiner has retained an attorney following an incident in which he was accused of sending a lewd photo to a Twitter follower. Weiner claims that his Twitter account was hacked and that the attorney is only to advise him of “what civil or criminal actions should be taken” regarding the incident. The tweet, which contained a close-up image of a man’s underwear, was directed toward a Washington state college student who has had no contact with Weiner previously. Weiner said there may be a link between his Facebook account being hacked and the Twitter incident.
Happy Memorial Day! In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s influence in our nation’s capitol, discuss whether a politician sent a naughty tweet to one of his followers, and Google’s Street View launch in India.
An interesting segment on NPR’s Morning Edition explored Facebook’s extensive relationships with power brokers in Washington D.C. From the President himself to many influential members of Congress, Facebook has a lot of important friends and that has raised concern among some consumer activists. The NPR segment discusses whether Facebook’s cozy ties could lead to favorable treatment when it comes time to pass and enforce consumer privacy protections.
According to The Hill, “Rep. Anthony Weiner has signaled that his Twitter feed was recently hacked, after a sexually suggestive picture was sent from his account to a female follower.” Unlike some politicians who have shut down their accounts following an embarrassment such as this, Weiner has continued using Twitter to connect with his followers and deny the lewd tweet was anything but a hacker attack.
State Sen. Ellen Corbett’s much-debated online privacy bill, SB 242, failed to pass in the California Senate last week. The bill, which was opposed by social networking companies like Twitter and Facebook, would have required social media websites to create an opt-in to sharing prior to joining the site and also gave parents a high level of control over their children’s online profiles. The bill will be reintroduced soon.
Google launched its popular, but controversial Street View program in India last week, and it appears that the company has learned lessons from its previous privacy missteps. According to the Wall Street Journal, “StreetView vehicles in India aren’t collecting information from wireless networks,” but rather from cellular towers.
It’s graduation season, which means thousands of bright-eyed and eager students from across the country are getting ready to enter the job market. But before they start sending out resumes and cover letters, most college grads would be wise to check their online reputation as well.
The economy is still recovering, which means that there are a lot of qualified job applicants for every available job. If there’s something negative on your Google results, it could be a red flag for a hiring manager that they need to find someone else for the position.
To help new grads understand the importance of their online reputations, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik recently appeared as a guest on a special NBC San Diego segment with consumer advocate Bob Hansen. Check out the segment below to learn why ORM matters and what you can do to help promote a positive reputation online. For more ORM advice, check out the Reputation.com Resource Center.
In today’s Quick Hits, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares his thoughts on privacy, a teacher and firefighter are fired for Facebook, and the EU is in disarray over implementation of a new privacy law.
In an interview at the e-G8 conference in Paris, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been criticized in the past for saying privacy is no longer a “social norm,” minimized the issue of privacy yet again. While acknowledging that users feel a “real anxiety” when things change on Facebook, Zuckerberg also said that most users get to a point where they feel “How can there be Facebook without this?” However, what Zuckerberg is describing can also be accounted for as a normalization of privacy encroachment, according to the consumer rights group Privacy International. Making site changes gradually may convince users give up more of their information, but it doesn’t mean that they’re comfortable with it, and Facebook’s position seems to suggest otherwise.
A Massachusetts teacher was fired from his position as a substitute teacher and boys’ tennis coach after school officials determined that he had engaged in “inappropriate communication’’ with students on Facebook. The article is not explicit in what the teacher said to earn the termination, but the school superintendent did say that “‘friending’ students on a social network is not an appropriate boundary to cross.” Other teachers across the country have been suspended or fired for their Facebook profiles, making online reputation management a growing area of concern for the education community.
A firefighter, who was fired for criticizing town officials on his Facebook page and for using a gay slur, is claiming that he was terminated for bringing up honest safety issues that the town didn’t want to address. According to the Boston Globe, the firefighter has “filed a complaint in US District Court, seeking his job back, back pay, and other damages.” For their part, town officials say it was the gay slur that prompted the dismissal, saying that it “reflected discrimination and undermined his ability to serve the public.” The issue of what employees, particularly public employees, can and cannot say online is hotly debated. In the last year, the National Labor Relations Board has numerous times defended employees who where terminated for their online speech.
According to CNET, “U.S. Sen. Al Franken wants Apple and Google to require that apps clearly detail their privacy policies so users can better understand what information is being collected.” Sen. Franken’s request comes following multiple hearings on the issue of mobile privacy in recent months. Franken acknowledged that improving privacy policies would not solve all privacy issues, but wrote that “it would be a simple first step that would provide users, privacy advocates, and federal consumer protection authorities a minimum of information about what information an app will access and how that app will share that information with third parties.”
On May 25th, a European Union directive went into effect that was supposed to require EU websites to get user consent before installing tracking cookies. However, only 2 of the 27 countries that make up the European Union successfully met all the requirements of the directive (Estonia and Denmark), while the U.K., France, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Latvia and Lithuania made partial progress. Indeed, many EU countries are already putting the issue on the back burner. According to the Register, U.K. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham “confirmed yesterday that no action would be immediately taken against companies that ignored the rules” for up to one year.
Negative reviews online can be phenomenally damaging to a medical professional’s livelihood. However, a new tactic being pushed by some companies and adopted by some doctors actually presents a bigger reputation risk.
This article from Ars Technica offers a firsthand account of how the author was asked to sign a legal agreement at his dentist’s office conferring legal ownership of any future public comments he might make about the dentist. When the author refused to sign the agreement, he sought commentary from the dentist, but was rebuffed. Later, he learned that a company was selling the documents to doctors and dentists with the promise that it could help them remove fraudulent reviews.
In the article, numerous legal experts come down against the agreements, saying that they wouldn’t hold much weight in court and may be causing patients to censor themselves unknowingly. Unfortunately for the dentist, who actually did have very positive online reviews, this story, which has been shared widely online, will now sit in his Google results instead.
Here at Reputation.com, we frequently take on doctors, dentists, and other medical professionals as clients. However, we don’t advocate this kind of reputation management strategy, because it is both unethical and unlikely to succeed. Rather, we offer our clients a holistic approach to reputation management that helps them deal with negative content online by increasing the amount of positive factual content in search engine results. We also empower doctors to interact with their patients directly via social media tools, and offer a convenient jumping-off point for physicians who are unfamiliar with the social web.
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