Entries from August 2011 ↓
August 5th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the history of photo sharing on Facebook, why real name policies online are revolutionary, what one mom found when she went undercover online, and the growth of facial recognition technology.
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PCMag shares an interesting infographic from Pixable.com that details how photo sharing has changed over Facebook’s history. The information is very interesting and reveals the many subtle ways that Facebook has pushed users to share more and more photos on the site. Facebook predicts that by the end of the summer, there will be more than 100 billion photos on the site.
In a very engaging article for The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal explains why Facebook and Google’s policies of requiring real names are revolutionary. Quoting the article, “In real life, we expect very few statements to be public, persistent, and attached to your real identity… Online, Google and Facebook require an inversion of this assumed norm. Every statement you make on Google Plus or Facebook is persistent and strongly attached to your real identity through your name.” Madrigal’s assessment reflects the growing importance of online reputation management.
An Australian mother wanted to see what her 15-year-old daughter might face online, so she set-up a fake Facebook account pretending to be a 14-year-old girl. After gaining 76 friends, the mom set out to see the kinds of things teenagers share online. She was quickly shocked to see cyberbullying, pornography, and vulgar exchanges. While the mom’s actions violated Facebook’s terms of service, they did provide insight into why Australia is debating a possible resolution to allow parents access to their children’s social media accounts.
Despite considerable concern from privacy advocates, facial recognition technology continues to boom, particularly within consumer tech products.This piece from The Atlantic Wire discusses how consumer interest in facial recognition technology has led to the development of a range of products, including a device that uses facial recognition to customize TV programming based on a scan of who is watching.
August 4th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about how deleted tweets are “undetweetable,” Facebook’s upcoming design tweaks, new facial recognition technology, and a guide to Google+ privacy settings.
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When someone deletes a tweet, he or she probably assumes that nobody will be able to access it (and rightly so). Unfortunately, that’s not the case, as demonstrated by the new website Undetweetable. The website was created by Dean Terry who says it is meant “to test limits, to question privacy, data ownership and explore the idea of the permanence of online expression.” Twitter has already forced Terry to shut down Undetweetable, but the website still retains all of its archived tweets.
ZDNet writes that Facebook is experimenting with an unfiltered news feed and expanded functionality for the site’s ubiquitous “like” button. Facebook is making the changes to improve advertising on the site. As ZDNet explains, “Facebook’s algorithms don’t display every piece of content that is shared, limiting the impact of the various advertising campaigns launched on the website. Facebook engineers are reportedly working to create an unfiltered News Feed that would show everything your friends are doing on the social network: from what games and apps they are using on the site to what Pages of companies and products they Like.”
A new software program from a University of Washington scientist and Google engineer is pushing the limits of facial recognition technology. The software, which has already been incorporated into Google’s Picasa photo-sharing service, synchs an individual’s facial features and expressions across multiple photos to create a movie. In Picasa, the feature is known as Face Movie and it also includes a name tagging feature. While technologically impressive, this software raises numerous privacy questions. If software like this can do such a good job of organizing unstructured photos, what could it do on a website like Facebook, where there are billions of available images?
Gawker’s Lifehacker blog has a great guide to Google+ privacy settings. Included in the guide are detailed instructions on how to conceal one’s profile, manage Google’s Social Circles feature, and how to ensure your posts don’t unintentionally end up being public.
August 3rd, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about another political scandal involving nude photos, a mini-conference on Facebook breakups, and Foursquare’s potential privacy concerns.
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Thanks to Rep. Anthony Weiner’s long and embarrassing sexting scandal, most politicians will now think twice before sending nude photos of themselves online. Unfortunately, for one New Jersey politician, Weiner’s revelation came too late. The county politician, who had been sexting with a woman for years, was recently forced to resign when the woman shared his photos with a local conservative blogger. The politician is now investigating legal action against the woman and the blogger for possible criminal and civil violations.
Demonstrating why it might be a viable competitor to Facebook, Google+ has reached the 25 million user milestone faster than any other website in history. It only took Google one month to accumulate 25 million users. By comparison, Facebook and Twitter reached that milestone in three years and two and a half years, respectively.
How to break up on Facebook is not a lesson that you’ll see taught in most classrooms, but a group of public health officials recently discussed the issue with 200 teens during a special one-day conference sponsored by the Boston Public Health Commission. Facebook is the hub of many teens’ social lives, and going through the public embarrassment of an online break up can be especially traumatic. The conference also hoped to teach teens a sense of personal responsibility in their interpersonal relationships by showing that face-to-face communication is the best way to end a relationship.
In his iGeneration blog for ZDNet, Zack Whittaker asks whether its right for companies to discipline or fire employees for online misconduct. In the article, Whittaker talks with a representative from the National Labor Relations Board, and discusses how labor law may be changing to reflect the new realities of the digital age.
BNET’s Erik Sherman writes about the location check-in service Foursquare and its new plans to gain revenues. According to Sherman, Foursquare’s plan “is to help merchants recognize consumer behavior and then market more effectively to them.” On the surface, that sounds similar to what other social networking websites have done, except there’s one key difference. As a location-sharing tool, Foursquare has access to information on where people go and what they do. Therefore, the personalization being touted is much more advanced.
As Sherman explains, “The minute you start analysis on people at specific stores, particularly smaller stores with repeat customers, consumer anonymity begins to fade. If someone came in with a coupon for five people, you start to remember them. Set the right specials, and a store owner could begin matching faces, names (especially from credit card purchases), and online identities.” These plans could set up Foursquare for some uncomfortable questioning in front of an increasingly privacy-conscious Congress if things don’t go well for the company.
August 2nd, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research, Social Networking | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a researcher’s claims that social media is creating a generation of narcissists (and why that assessment may not be backed up by science). We also have info on Facebook’s facial recognition technology, tips on online etiquette, and news on Microsoft’s location sharing policies.
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British researcher Baroness Greenfield is warning that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media could be creating “a generation obsessed with themselves, who have short attention spans and a childlike desire for constant feedback on their lives.” Despite this dire proclamation, however, the Guardian’s science blogger Martin Robbins writes that Greenfield’s warnings are overblown. In a response, Robbins writes that no research has been performed on the issue and criticized the professor for using the media “as a platform to push her theories to the public.”
In a recent statement, Johannes Caspar, data protection commissioner for the state of Hamburg, criticized Facebook’s new facial recognition feature, saying that he doesn’t think the technology “conforms with EU data protection law.” Caspar says his office has “repeatedly asked Facebook to shut down the facial recognition function and to delete the previously stored data,” without success. The feature, which has been available in the United States since December 2010, uses facial recognition technology to identify a user’s friends in a photo and suggests “tagging” them.
A special feature in the Toronto Sun discusses digital etiquette and how responsible social networking can help protect one’s online reputation. In the article, social media experts Scott Stratten and Dave Larsen offer several smart pieces of advice including a reminder to “never say, text, tweet or upload anything you don’t want to see on a billboard with your name, face and logo on it with your boss, mom and best client driving by.”
Microsoft, which has positioned itself as a champion of consumer privacy issues among tech companies, has quietly announced that it will stop publishing estimated location data from its smartphones. Microsoft’s decision comes as Google and Apple are still feeling the negative effects of reports that they surreptitiously tracked user data from mobile devices.
August 1st, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a newly discovered and unblockable tracking cookie. We also discuss how the combination of Facebook and facial recognition technology can unlock your social security number.
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Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, including Christopher Hoofnagle and Ashkan Soltani, recently uncovered a new tracking cookie that is effectively impossible for individuals to avoid. According to Wired, the service is called KISSmetrics, and it works even “when users block cookies, turn off storage in Flash, or use browsers’ ‘incognito’ functions.” In a comment, Hoofnagle explains why this form of tracking is disturbing, saying “Part of our point here concerns the arms race between trackers and consumers. Although the industry has stated in principle that individuals should be able to opt out, they have defined the opt out very narrowly.”
A new law in Missouri prevents teachers from friending students on Facebook and other social networking websites. The law is generally focused on requiring schools to report suspected abuse within 24 hours, but tucked inside of the law is wording that says teachers aren’t allowed to have “nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student.” Some teachers have been critical of the law for what they believe is an overly broad ban.
A professor at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated how facial recognition technology, paired with publicly accessible Facebook data, can help uncover at least part of an individual’s social security number. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Prof. Alessandro Acquisti, the study’s author, also found that about 27% of the time, using data gleaned from Facebook profiles of the subjects he identified, he could correctly predict the first five digits of their Social Security numbers.” Acquisti believes this research shows that Facebook has become “a de facto identity-verification service.”
This article from MSNBC talks about Google+ and how job seekers can use the new social networking service to help with professional networking. According to the article, Google+’s blend of Twitter and Facebook-like functionality makes it an ideal service for networking. A job seeker can interact with hiring managers and recruiters at a deeper level than Twitter and, thanks to Google+’s social circles feature, without revealing personal information that they might have on their Facebook profile.
A new piece of legislation with the admirable goal of ending child pornography could be a threat to personal privacy online, according to many privacy advocates. This article from Donor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic discusses the bill in detail, explaining that “under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you’ve been assigned.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and numerous other groups, have come down against the bill, which still must pass a vote in the full House of Representatives before becoming law.
