Entries from June 2011 ↓
June 14th, 2011 | Facebook, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, the media plunders the Anthony Weiner scandal for more stories, Nissan is accused of tracking driver data, and Mitch Lipka debates Facebook photo tagging.
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As more and more lewd photos of Rep. Anthony Weiner hit the web, the Congressman’s online exploits continue to be a source of inspiration for journalists. In this New York Times piece, Tara Parker-Pope looks at the practice of digital flirting and discusses why it’s so easy to do (and even easier to get caught doing). In her article, Parker-Pope cites research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project that shows we all might be a little bit more like Anthony Weiner than we’d think. According to Pew data, among people ages 18 to 29, “nearly one-third of that group say they have received sexually suggestive or nude photos of someone they know, and 13 percent say they have sent them.”
Given how damaging that these online indiscretions can become, one wonders why so many people engage in sexting and other risky online behavior. The rest of the Times article features insight from behavioral experts and psychologists on why this behavior is becoming more of a norm for online adults.
Like I said before, Rep. Anthony Weiner’s photo scandal is getting coverage all over the Internet. This article from CNN and Wired offers yet another unique angle on the story. Rather than focusing on the indiscretions themselves, Wired’s Steven Levy looks at the various steps that led to Weiner’s undressing (pun definitely intended). Levy recounts how Twitter’s founders decided to develop the open reply system, as well as the more private direct message system, and how the two are easily mismanaged. Because Weiner didn’t realize just how transparent his online flirting was, by the time he accidentally shared a picture of himself publicly instead of privately, it was easy to trace the digital trail to other inappropriate exchanges.
Is great mileage worth sharing your driving history? According to the Wall Street Journal, “A U.S.-based blogger on SeattleWireless.net who says he owns a Leaf claims that the car’s telematic system automatically sends pinpoint data on the car’s location to any third-party RSS feed to which drivers subscribe.” Nissan says it is looking into the claims, but the Wall Street Journal makes the point that the vehicle’s owner’s manual grants broad sharing of personal data.
Veteran consumer reporter Mitch Lipka takes a nuanced look at Facebook photo tagging and the recent drama over Facebook’s decision to rollout its facial recognition feature across the site. In his column, Lipka talks with privacy advocates about the dangers related to photo tagging, and offers step-by-step advice on how to help keep your online content hidden from people other than your friends. Lipka’s closing line gets to the heart of the issue: “Just remember that today a quick search of a person’s name can deliver a lot information, including a photo of you at that party last Saturday doing something you might not remember. And, by the way, the company you’d like to work for is looking at it right now.”
June 13th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s facial recognition flap, dig up some new research on Internet privacy, and ponder the way in which technology and political sex scandals go hand in hand.
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According to new info from Microsoft’s “Internet Explorer 9: Future of the Web” study, loss of Internet privacy is a chief concern for thousands of Internet users across Europe. In the study, which polled over 10,000 Internet users from 12 European countries, 45% of respondents indicated that loss of online privacy by 2020 was a top concern, with 60% “worrying that companies will track and save their every online move.” The study also touched on the importance of online reputation management with 24% of respondents indicating that they “believe that people’s online personas could even become more important than their real-life identities.”
Several privacy groups are calling on the FTC to launch an investigation into Facebook following the company’s rollout of its new facial recognition feature. According to the Washington Post, EPIC’s Marc Rotenberg said that the feature violates consumer protection laws, and that “even though users can opt out of the service, Facebook subscribers weren’t notified of the risks associated with the service” when they were opted in by default. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) also took exception with Facebook, though less with the feature itself and more with how Facebook rolled it out. In a statement, Rep. Markey said Facebook should ask for permission rather than assume it.
In an excellent article for PCWorld, Dan Tynan discusses the furor over Facebook’s facial recognition feature and why facial recognition isn’t the issue with which everyone should be concerned. Tynan says that the real issue with Facebook photos is tagging, namely that there’s no way to stop other people from tagging you in photos. This can be problematic, particularly if someone posts a lewd photo and tags you, and you don’t react in time to untag yourself. Quoting Tynan, “Allowing other people to tag you at will can be problematic in all kinds of ways. Want to opt out of allowing friends to tag you? Tough. Facebook doesn’t give you that option. All you can do is control who sees the things you’re tagged in (friends, friends of friends, etc) or remove the tags one by one.”
If you’ve been tagged over and over, it could take hours or even days to untag all of the photos, and there’s no way to stop new photos from being tagged of you in the future. Even more concerning, you don’t even have to be a user of Facebook to be tagged in a photo on the site. If you’re not a Facebook user and you’re tagged in a damaging photo, you have almost no recourse to correct the issue. That’s a privacy issue, and one that is more pressing than facial recognition.
In response to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s lewd photo scandal, the New York Times put out an interesting feature on the way technology and political sex scandals have been historically interconnected. In the article, Kate Zernike writes that, “the Internet, with its promise of simultaneous intimacy and distance, offers a new way to flout moral strictures” and that, while politicians are smart enough to avoid public lapses of judgment, they think that “sending raunchy pictures online at midnight seems somehow different.” It’s an interesting piece and one that highlights the need for proactive online reputation management for politicians.
It looks like this Internet thing is here to stay. According to data provided to Mashable.com by Cisco, ”global Internet traffic is expected to quadruple between 2010 and 2015.” The research predicts that by 2015, 3 billion people will be using the Internet, or approximately 40% of the world’s population. The increase in Internet use will be tied to wider expansion of Internet technology including a huge push in mobile Internet use.
June 7th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about celebrity Twitter snafus, when kids should join Facebook, and Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s thoughts on Google.
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In a new series called the Red Tape Parenting Debates, MSNBC consumer reporter Bob Sullivan discusses the appropriate age for kids to join Facebook. In the article, Sullivan talks about COPPA, the current federal child protection law, which prohibits children from joining websites until they are 13. Despite COPPA, however, many children still use social networking sites, with recent figures suggesting that parents are okay with underage kids on Facebook. Sullivan appeals to his readers to debate the issue and share their thoughts on when kids should be allowed to join Facebook.
According to the Vancouver Sun, “Jennifer Stoddart, the privacy commissioner famous for taking on Facebook, said she’s satisfied with Google’s response to her office’s investigation into the company’s ‘inappropriate’ collection of private info from unsecure wireless networks across Canada whhile its cars gathered images of neighbourhoods around the world for its Street View map service.” Stoddart has been one of the most vocal consumer privacy advocates in the Internet privacy debate and is widely respected for taking tough stances against companies that violate user privacy and consumer choice.
An interesting article for the Vancouver Sun discusses the growth of social media and how it has raised several unforeseen issues for Canadian employers. The article discusses several highly-debated issues related to social media, including employee productivity and whether or not it’s appropriate for recruiting professionals to scan the Internet for new hires. According to the article, recent polls have shown that ”45 per cent of hiring managers use [social media] to vet job candidates.” A Microsoft survey of American hiring managers revealed that as many as 79% used the Internet to research job applicants.
Professional soccer player Ryan Giggs is feeling the full wrath of the ‘Streisand effect,’ following a widely publicized effort to hide a recent affair from the UK media. After Giggs’ affair was exposed on Twitter, the U.K. media jumped on the opportunity to report on the story, despite having to wrestle with a court-ordered injunction on the news.
The resulting coverage of the affair, as well as the coverage of the injunction, has led to an even larger reputation problem for Giggs, mirroring something that Internet experts call the ‘Streisand effect.’ Named after entertainer Barbara Streisand, the phrases describes a phenomena in which attempts to cover up a minor issue inversely draw greater attention to it.
Inspired by the recent news that Rep. Anthony Weiner had sent lewd photos of himself and other sexual content to women over the Internet, the entertainment website E! put together a list of five other memorable celebrity tweets. The list of celeb tweets are not nearly as damaging as Weiner’s errant message, but they do show that Twitter is a tricky medium to master, even for publicity-aware celebrities.
June 6th, 2011 | Facebook, Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Student Online Reputation | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we share an unusual story from Germany as well as some news on social networking legislation.
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California Social Networking Privacy Bill Rejected for Second Time
California State Senator Ellen Corbett’s hotly debated Internet privacy bill was recently rejected by the California Senate for a second time. The bill, SB242, would have forced social networking websites such as Facebook to require users to opt-in to information sharing prior to joining the website. According to the San Jose Mercury News, lobbying by Internet companies played an important role in the rejection of the bill. On her part, Sen. Corbett promises to “vowed to continue working on the issue and organize a summit on Internet privacy.”
A 16-year-old girl in Hamburg, Germany, didn’t have such a sweet sixteenth after more than 1500 people showed up for her birthday bash. The party, which was accidentally listed as a public event on Facebook, drew a wild bunch of uninvited guests. According to Businss Insider, ”11 people were temporarily detained, several girls wearing flip-flops cut their feet on broken glass and a garbage can was set on fire” during the night’s rather unusal festivities.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Jonathan Zimmerman writes about the growing number of incidents involving teachers being suspended or fired for inappropriate online comments. While some of these teachers have supporters, Zimmerman believes that “by supporting teachers’ right to rant against students online, we devalue their status as professionals and actually make it harder to protect real academic freedom in the classroom.”
In an op-ed for the Denver Post, Lisa Wirthman writes in support of the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011. In her article, Lisa says that the bill would improve upon the existing COPPA legislation because it would “include mobile devices and add new privacy protections to prohibit tracking of kids’ online activities for commercial purposes without consent” as well as “require ‘Eraser Buttons’ to allow teens to delete personal data.” The Do Not Track Kids Act is one of the more closely followed bills related to online privacy in Congress.
June 3rd, 2011 | Facebook, Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Intel’s interesting new ‘Museum of Me’ website, new problems for Sony, the White House’s plans on privacy, and a new study revealing the core safety issues of data collection.
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Whether we realize it or not, all of the pictures, notes, videos, and other content we share on Facebook is basically a shrine to our lives. If you laid out someone’s Facebook history in the right order, you could more or less see their life unfold before your eyes. In an interesting application of this premise, Intel developed a website called “Museum of Me.” The website, which is accessed via Facebook, takes the user through a ”visual archive of [his or her] social life.”
According to CNET, “As the tour commences, users will ‘walk’ through rooms, showing the profile pictures of friends, personal photos, videos from their profiles, and much more. The ‘museum’ also includes a collection of status updates and other content posted to their wall. Another room shows the user’s location information on a map.” Whether you’re concerned about privacy or not, ‘Museum of Me’ is worth checking out just to see how much time and energy you’ve invested into Facebook.
According to a new study, “three quarters of popular websites are leaking private information or users’ unique identifiers to third-party tracking sites.” As Reputation.com has said before, however, the real issue isn’t the tracking itself, but rather how the data can be linked with other personal information to create a unique personality profile. Craig Wills, professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), fears the same thing, warning that “the tracking sites could then link many disparate pieces of information – the contents of searches on health and travel sites, say – to create detailed profiles of individuals.” Willis believes last year’s FTC recommendations regarding tracking would be ineffective in disrupting the real danger inherent to data collection.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Weitzner, deputy chief technology officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, indicated that ”the Obama administration will pursue a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to enhanced privacy protection by pushing for a new law while encouraging industry to do a better job policing itself.” Thus far, self-regulation efforts have been met with stiff resistance and called ineffective by some politicians. Meanwhile, at least five privacy bills have been introduced in Congress so far this year. Weitzner said that the White House will release white paper with more detailed privacy policies later this year.
Sony, fresh off of one of the largest corporate data breaches in history, is in trouble with hackers again. According to PCMag.com, “A group that identifies itself as Lulzsec claims to have hacked into SonyPictures.com and compromised the personal information of more than 1 million users.” Sony only recently was able to restore its Playstation Network after a massive breach compromised the accounts of millions of Playstation users. The company is still investigating who coordinated the first attack, but this second breach is allegedly from a group calling itself Lulzsec.
