Entries from June 2011 ↓
June 30th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Internet Safety, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a privacy concern with the Google+ Project, why Facebook photos matter, how to avoid “fake friends,” and what people think of Social Intelligence.
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It was bound to happen sooner or later. After rolling out to praise from privacy advocates, the Google+ Project, Google’s new social networking feature, has hit a bump in the road. Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times discovered that Google’s reshare feature essentially negates the Circles feature, which promises to help users share content with a select group of friends. Quoting the article, “Say a close friend of mine posts a picture of her kids to her ‘friends’ Circle. With the ‘share’ option on every Google+ post, I can reshare this with absolutely anyone, from another Circle to which my friend does not belong, right through to making it completely public. The same loophole applies not just to photos but to any kind of post, as far as I can tell.”
If users were aware that what they shared in a semi-public group could be immediately blasted to the general public, they might not be as comfortable sharing it. But, Google doesn’t make this reality clear. Hopefully, Google will insert a solution to this problem as Google+ comes out of beta.
Facebook has a big problem with spam accounts and bogus friend requests. In this article for ITWorld, Dan Tynan discusses the issue and offers some sage advice for reducing your chances of getting targeted by a fake user.
Kashmir Hill talks about the recently approved social media background check company Social Intelligence in this article for Forbes. The article also highlights numerous comments from readers. The comments range from negative to positive, with some people calling Social Intelligence a crazy company and others saying it’s no big deal and may in fact help employers select better employees.
This CNN article talks about Facebook photos and why they are such an important part of the Facebook experience. Quoting the article, “No surprise, social media sites are becoming more and more important for networking and socialization. New friends and potential employers alike could be encountering your profile photos and information before actually meeting you in person. Profile photos are all the more important now.” And because profile photos are so important to establishing an individual’s online reputation, it is important that Facebook users use caution in what they share online. As CNN advises, “the most important rule of all might be to remember that the Internet never forgets, so put some thought into what you share.”
June 29th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits, Social Networking, Student Online Reputation | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the Google+ Project and delve into the lives of Australia’s hard-partying, Facebook-sharing teens.
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Yesterday, Google rolled out its long-awaited social networking feature, the Google+ Project. Initially, only a handful of people were given access to Google+. The folks at Business Insider were among the early users, and they have broken down the entire Google+ Project into 29 slides. If you’re still waiting to check out Google+ for yourself, Business Insider’s tour is a great way to learn more about the product.
One thing that Google has been getting high marks on with Google+ is the company’s deference for user privacy. In an article for CNET, Declan McCullagh writes that Google+’s “Circles” feature makes it easier to group your friends and selectively publish online content. McCullagh also notes that Google+ also has significantly fewer privacy settings, making it easier for users to customize their Google+ accounts than their Facebook accounts.
Two years after a New York man left a violent, Fight Club-inspired Facebook rant against an Apple store, a judge has decided to throw out the charges against him. On his Facebook page, the man wrote he “might walk into an Apple store on Fifth Avenue with an Armalite AR-10 gas powered semi-automatic weapon and pump round after round into one of those smug, fruity little concierges,” which is nearly identical to a similar line in the book Fight Club. This incident highlights how one individual’s online content can be misconstrued and cause significant reputation problems.
This article in the Sydney Morning Herald offers a disturbing glimpse into the wild, alcohol-fueled lives of Australia’s 17 and 18-year-old teen girls. While the article goes into a wide range of issues surrounding this hard-partying set, one element of the story is worth highlighting. According to the Herald article, these girls not only party, but document every moment of the party to share on Facebook the following day, with no regard for the reputation consequences.
Quoting Gordian Fulde, the director of emergency medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, from the article: “And these days, if a girl goes out and gets trashed and vomits, maybe even ends up in emergency, they freak out at the time but you can see that they’re getting a badge of honour. The next day the photos will go up on Facebook.” Setting aside the many health risks of binge drinking, this “badge of honor” can quickly become a scarlet letter for these girls as they move on to college or into the adult workforce.
According to the MIT Tech Review, via Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill, “if you’re not making efforts to anonymize your Web browsing, you may be leaking information to your competitors when visiting their websites.” Kashmir goes on to describe how businesses can track and log IP addresses to their websites and determine who is visiting and from what company. In a highly competitive market, it could be damaging if a competitor learned that you were investigating a specific product or service through your unfiltered IP address.
June 28th, 2011 | Facebook, Identity Management, Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s pending redesign, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill’s desire for a universal Do-Not-Track tool, and much more.
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CNET’s Dennis O’Reilly shares step-by-step advice on how individuals can remove YouTube videos or Facebook photos by flagging them as inappropriate content. While the technique isn’t foolproof, in some cases it could be useful in getting unwanted content taken down. A more successful method of dealing with negative online content is to displace it with positive content.
Facebook is testing a major redesign that would allow the company to sell more expensive and effective advertising. Quoting The Atlantic, “The new homepage tweak, if made public (and it probably will be), would keep the placement of advertisements and the menu navigation window static. As the user scrolls down the page, scanning their News Feed and checking in on friends, these elements would follow them. The navigation bar at the top of the screen and even the site’s footer would also remain static.” Because the ads will remain static, advertisers will likely see higher impression rates and higher click-through rates, meaning Facebook can charge more for the advertising space.
FTC Commissioner Julie Brill has continued to push for a universal do-not-track mechanism to protect Internet users from invasive advertising. During a speech at the Center for American Progres, Brill said Web-based companies are “harvesting and trading in information about where we are, what we do, who we meet and what we buy,” and that, “the amount of tracking of an individual’s behavior online — what sites she visits, what ads she clicks on, what she says when she chats and where she wanders through the day — is unprecedented.” Interestingly, the FTC’s CTO Ed Felten questioned the feasibility of an Internet delete button calling the development of such technology a “headscratcher.”
Popular Science recently published a point/counterpoint on the subject of mandatory Internet IDs. The first article, which promotes the idea, says “the envisioned ‘identity ecosystem’ will provide Americans with a number of different options for ‘trusted credentials’ that will step up the protection of their online identities without sacrificing their privacy.” The counter argument argues that “as imperfect and piecemeal as our current safeguards can be, creating yet another online ID that hackers will inevitably exploit is not the way to boost privacy or make people feel better about online transactions.”
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reviews Erasing David, a new documentary film that explores the concept of privacy and anonymity in the new digital age. In the film, the filmmaker attempts to “disappear” for 30 days, and hires a well-respected private investigations firm to track him down. The result is a thought-provoking documentary on how much information we share online and whether we have control of our digital lives.
June 27th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about photo sharing, Social Intelligence, and complex privacy policies.
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This report from CNN.com discusses how Americans have grown more and more comfortable with sharing photos of themselves since the advent of the digital camera and of social networking websites like Facebook and Flickr. Quoting the article, “Today, 79% of American households own digital cameras, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. The Pew Internet and American Life Project says 85% use cell phones, most of which have a camera feature included. And about half of American adults have a presence on social media, according to Pew. As with anything, this ubiquity breeds familiarity, and familiarity leads to comfort.” As facial recognition technology becomes more commonplace, our collective lack of camera shyness may pose a privacy threat.
In this report, FOX News New York discusses the new social media background check company Social Intelligence. Quoting the article, “If you are job hunting and are the subject of some unflattering photos or information out there on the Internet, the sour economy may not be your worst enemy.” Since the FTC cleared Social Intelligence to perform background checks, the company has been in the news extensively. Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik discussed the company in interviews with Marketplace Radio and ABC News.
According to CNET’s Declan McCullogh, “Google has taken steps to limit the disclosure of the locations of millions of iPhones, laptops, and other devices with Wi-Fi connections after a CNET article drew attention to privacy concerns…The change means that Google now appears to be moving closer to the approach adopted by Apple and Microsoft, which never made their location databases public.” While the details involved in this issue are fairly technical for most mobile users, the issue at stake, personal location privacy, is important and Google’s changes demonstrate how public pressure is forcing companies to consider privacy issues more thoughtfully.
In a hearing last week, the Senate and the White House discussed federal legislation to address potential cyber attacks. Quoting Business Insider, “Under the administration’s proposal, cyber attacks would become crimes under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, synchronizing prosecution of computer charges with other types of crime and giving convicted criminals longer prison sentences than are common under existing federal law.” The issue of cyber security has become more pronounced in recent months as numerous major corporations have become victims of major data breaches.
Tech and humor writer Dan Tynan talks about confusing privacy policies in this ITWorld column about the website StickK.com and issues that he found with the site’s information sharing practices. Tynan’s article illustrates how complex privacy policies can confuse users and create an environment where personal information is unprotected.
June 24th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, Facebook nears another milestone as Facebook users continue to foul things up for themselves.
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Despite reports that Facebook saw a recent decline in users, an insider has told TechCrunch that the world’s largest social networking is close to passing 750 million users. If the figures are true, and previous estimates suggest that they are, it would be another impressive milestone for the company, which reached the 500 million user milestone less than a year ago. As Facebook continues to expand, the company is branching out into new technologies and investigating new forms of advertising and revenue generation.
In a new weekly feature, Forbes privacy blogger Kashmir Hill shares the best Facebook follies from the week. In this edition, Kashmir talks about the many Vancouver rioters who shared their criminal actions on Facebook, a woman who accidentally posted a sex video online, and a man who updated his Facebook profile during a dangerous stand-off with police.
AllFacebook reports on two new browser extensions for Facebook that claim to protect user information from third-party apps. The extensions, Social Monitor and Disconnect, work in slightly different ways. The first tool examines a user’s profile and offers “threat level” information on a user’s apps. The second tool blocks Facebook, Twitter, and Google from grabbing a user’s browsing history.
In an op-ed for The Hill, Peter Swire, chief counselor for privacy to former President Clinton a Future of Privacy Forum fellow, explains why Internet privacy legislation is such a high priority in Congress. In the article, Swire clearly explains how multiple privacy issues have converged in such a way that privacy legislation is imminent. The article is a bit wonky on policy issues, but it’s great reading for someone interested in privacy politics.
