Entries from September 2011 ↓
September 29th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research, Social Networking | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, Facebook gets heat from Congress and Spotify gets heat from Facebook users. Meanwhile, Hollywood tries to capitalize on Facebook’s popularity and a survey shows the corporate security risks involving social media use.
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Congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton have asked the FTC to investigate Facebook following reports that the company was tracking users even while they were logged off of the service. In a statement, Markey and Barton wrote, “as co-Chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we believe that tracking user behavior without their consent or knowledge raises serious privacy concerns. When users log out of Facebook, they are under the expectation that Facebook is no longer monitoring their activities. We believe this impression should be the reality. Facebook users should not be tracked without their permission.” In response, Facebook changed the log-out process so that it doesn’t store cookies for logged-out users.
In an interesting experiment, director McG is incorporating Facebook data into his new teen-oriented web series “Aim High.” According to McG, the series will pull data from a user’s profile to augment the series and give it a personal touch. Quoting McG, “music that the characters are listening to comes from your playlist, pictures on the walls, TV screens and picture frames inside the show are from your profile.” The planned “social series” is an attempt by Hollywood studios to tap into the popularity of social media technology, which has been siphoning viewers from TV and films.
Spotify users were in an uproar this week when the company announced that it was only allowing users to log-in to the service via Facebook. This move was widely criticized as it made a user’s Spotify playlist instantly accessible to Facebook friends via Facebook’s new “frictionless sharing” feature. Because users want to keep their listening preferences private, Spotify backed off and created a private listening mode. So, while you still have to log-in to the site through Facebook, you don’t have to share your listening stream publicly.
According to a new global study by the Ponemon Institute, more than half of the 4,640 organizations polled indicated an increase in computer attacks as a result of workers using social networks. According to the study, “about a quarter of those respondents said the attacks rose by more than 50 percent” due to social media. The attacks mostly came via “social engineering,” which involves a deliberate attempt to target an individual using information in their profile to gain their trust and get them to click on a malicious link.
September 28th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Student Online Reputation | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about how to manage your privacy on the new Facebook, the problem with firing employees over social media, and actress Scarlett Johansson’s first official response to her recent nude photo scandal.
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As Facebook’s massive redesign rolls out to the site’s more than 800 million users in the coming weeks, it is important that users consider how the change will affect their personal privacy. This article from Mashable details how to manage all of the new features on Facebook, including advice on how to keep old embarrassing information doesn’t pop up on your Timeline, how to prevent Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing” from sharing too much of your content, and how to double-check which apps are allowed to share information on your profile.
This article from Reuters discusses how employers are struggling to come up with social media policies that allow them to terminate employees for inappropriate online activity. Because certain negative speech is protected, mainly comments about working conditions made to other employees, the National Labor Relations Board has forced companies to rehire employees that they fired for online comments.
Many parents like to share pictures of their babies online, but this story may give them pause. Yahoo Shine has the bizarre story of one woman who downloaded pictures of her friend’s baby and passed them off as pictures of her own child in order to get back at an ex-boyfriend. The woman, who told her ex that the child was his, was eventually exposed when a mutual friend of the couple recognized the baby as someone else’s child. Following the strange revenge scheme, the woman was fired from her job as a school teacher.
The Christian Science Monitor reports how schools across the country are struggling to balance the benefits of social media technology, such as enhanced communication between parents, teachers, and students, with the risks, namely cyber-bullying. The article discusses the issue in the context of a recent Missouri law that limits social media contact between teachers and students. Prior to revisions to the law, the Missouri proposal was criticized for being overly broad and potentially banning teachers from using social media technology at all.
Scarlett Johansson has spoken out about her recent nude photo scandal, calling the invasion of privacy “unjust” and “wrong.” Following the photo leak, Johansson and her attorneys worked quickly to have the photos removed from the top gossip sites where they appeared, but the images spread far and wide so quickly that it’s likely impossible for them to ever be fully removed from the Internet.
September 27th, 2011 | CyberBullying, Facebook, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook and Spotify’s close partnership, how one mom’s Facebook update ruined her sons’ football season, and the epidemic problem of cyberbullying.
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Spotify, once the envy of all music sharing sites for its positive press coverage and close partnership with Facebook, is on the defensive after making a change that requires users to log-in to the service using Facebook. People don’t necessarily want to share what they’re listening to on Spotify, which is what they’d have to do thanks to Facebook’s new “frictionless sharing” experience. Since the announcement, Spotify founder Daniel Ek has spent much time on Twitter defending the decision, but also acknowledging the potential for further changes based on feedback.
In an op-ed for Fox News, John Quain criticizes Facebook’s recent “convoluted, confused, and cluttered update,” writing that, while Facebook is a free service, it actually requires users to give up information about themselves to make money. Quain also points out that quitting Facebook offers no guarantee of privacy.
“The problem is that even if you abandon Facebook, others could be tagging you in photos, putting personal information about you online, and sharing it all with their 500 closest friends. Potential employers — and dates — can then use that information against you without your knowledge. One example: I’ve been tagged in photos on Facebook that I can’t delete or edit, even though at least one photo isn’t even of me (now people think I was at an event I didn’t attend).”
Recently, Australian tech developer Nik Cubrilovic discovered that Facebook was tracking data about users after they had logged out of the site. According to the Wall Street Journal, “When you log in to Facebook or visit Facebook.com without logging in, the site places small files called ‘cookies’ on your computer. Some of these cookies remain on your computer even after you log out, and then whenever you visit a site that connects to Facebook – such as those with a ‘Like’ button – information from those cookies is sent back to Facebook, providing a record of where you’ve been on the Web.” The ubiquity of the “like” button on the Web means that Facebook is able to collect a considerable amount of data from users even while they’re not on the site.
In an unusual story, a Tennessee mom is the center of a high school sports controversy after a Facebook update about her sons led to the revelation of the boys’ ineligibility to play and the team’s subsequent forfeiture of three wins. According to The Tennessean, the mom made a comment about how her sons leave messy rooms after only being in town for the weekend. The problem is that the mom lives in a different county. According to the TSSAA’s bylines, the boys weren’t allowed eligibility because the family continued “to maintain a previous residence for the residential purposes of that family or any of its members.”
According to a new MTV-AP poll, 56% of teens have been the victim of some form of online bullying or harassment. Three-quarters of respondents also said that online bullying was a serious problem, demonstrating a high level of awareness about the issue. This article from the Boston Globe discusses the poll and shares some examples of online bullying.
September 26th, 2011 | Careers, Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Social Networking | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Facebook’s dramatic recent changes, why it can be difficult to develop effective social media policies, and concern on Capitol Hill over OnStar’s recent privacy policy tweaks.
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One of Facebook’s new changes following its dramatic redesign is a feature called “frictionless sharing.” The idea behind frictionless sharing is that users can allow certain online activities to be shared with friends without manually updating their profiles. However, as this PCWorld article points out, frictionless sharing raises some very serious privacy concerns. Quoting the article, “The new functionality is reminiscent of Beacon, Facebook’s now defunct over-sharing system that landed the social network in hot water in 2007. Under the Beacon plan, if you bought movie tickets from the Fandango site, say, Facebook would alert your Facebook friends.”
Frictionless sharing is different than Beacon, because it requires explicit authorization before sharing info, but the same issue applies. You don’t want to share certain information on Facebook, but Facebook continues to make it easier and easier to share.
The Detroit Free Press has a nice write-up of Facebook’s recent design overhaul and what it means for users. In the article, Mark Smith touches on many possible privacy issues related to the makeover and also how users can protect themselves from sharing too much sensitive data online.
To protect their bottom lines, companies need to develop smart social media policies for employees. But many companies are having a hard time coming up with policies that don’t restrict employees’ freedom of speech, leading to several cases in which the National Labor Relations Board has helped employees who were fired for online comments regain their employment. This article from ABC News discusses the NLRB’s efforts to help employees who have been wrongfully terminated as well as companies who need to establish social media policies as part of a risk management strategy.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, who has been active in consumer privacy issues in Congress, has called for the FTC to launch an investigation into OnStar and the company’s recent privacy policy changes. Last week, OnStar made a switch to its privacy policy that gave the company a lot more room to share customer data with third-parties.
An Illinois couple has asked Facebook (all 800 million members) to help them pick a name for their unborn child. Perhaps anticipating that the Web could come up with something terrible, they have set-up a poll with their four favorite names and asked for votes. The four choices are McKenna, Madelyn, Addilyne, and Emily.
September 23rd, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research, Social Networking | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we share thoughts on Facebook’s f8 announcements, a survey showing opposition to Facebook’s news feed changes, a story about the online reputation perils of college newspapers, and the Australian government’s concerns over Internet privacy.
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Yesterday at the company’s annual f8 developer’s conference, Facebook premiered a drastically new look for its profiles called “Timeline.” Timeline allows users to see everything they’ve posted on Facebook over the course of their time on the site, making much more information available to friends and followers. While many were excited about this change, others were concerned about the privacy implications of having so much data readily available. Facebook expert Mari Smith discussed the changes with USA Today and touched on these privacy concerns. Quoting the article, “Among her own vast online community, [Smith] said she’d heard complaints that Facebook was asking users to share too much information and that there were overtones of Big Brother.”
According to a national phone survey, Facebook users dislike the company’s recent changes to the News Feed by a ratio of 5 to 1. Though the sample size of the survey was small compared to Facebook’s global userbase, it begs an intriguing question. If people are upset over changes to the news feed, how will they feel when the entire profile changes to the Timeline model shown at yesterday’s f8 conference?
By and large, people are different during their college years than they are as professionals. But, as more and more colleges put their newspaper archives online, alumni are learning that the things they did in college are catching up with them and, in some cases, damaging their online reputations. This article from USA Today discusses how college newspaper articles, both old and new, can cause reputation problems for college students and graduates.
Add Australia to the list of countries that have taken exception with the amount of personal data that Facebook and other social networking websites collect about users. According to The Australian, Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim recently issued a statement saying that “social networking sites needed to ensure their users knew exactly how and when their personal information would be used.” Pilgrim’s concern, echoed by academics, is that erosion of privacy will be normalized unless people are made explicitly aware of how much information they are sharing online.
