Entries from September 2011 ↓
September 15th, 2011 | Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about the differences between European and American privacy policies, a congressional privacy hearing, why “Daily Deals” might be bad for small businesses, and one man’s experience writing about the hacker collective Anonymous.
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In an interesting segment for Marketplace radio, Paul Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, talks about the differences between European and American privacy policies and how the U.S. could learn from Europe’s more comprehensive privacy laws.
USA Today tech reporter Byron Acohido writes that consumer privacy groups are upset with Rep. Mary Bono Mack’s planned congressional hearing today to discuss Internet privacy issues. According to the report, critics are concerned that the hearing “is being staged to give short shrift to how Europe has championed privacy rights for individual citizens” and that the hearing has an industry-focused agenda that doesn’t adequately take into account consumer concerns. In her defense, Bono Mack says she is trying to find “a sweet spot between too much regulation and no regulation at all,” a tricky balancing act that has plagued numerous privacy proposals.
Econsultancy shares the findings of a new MIT Technology Review report that shows how a “Daily Deal” offering can negatively impact a business’ online reputation on consumer review websites. According to the report, “ Groupon deal seems to have an adverse impact on reputation as measured by Yelp ratings. Their analysis shows that while the number of reviews increases signifificantly due to daily deals, average rating scores from reviewers who mention daily deals are about 10% lower than scores of their peers.” These findings suggest that small business owners should be very careful about how they use “Daily Deal” services, particularly with regard to their online reputations.
In a Huffington Post column, Cole Stryker talks about the many threats he’s received from the hacker group Anonymous following the publication of his book “Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web.” Stryker writes that he wasn’t, and still isn’t, afraid of Anonymous, writing that the group is “actually pretty ineffectual when you don’t give them the tools they need to engage in ‘life-ruining tactics,’ also known as data mining or social engineering. There are no nude pics of me being passed around on 4chan because there are no nude pics of me anywhere.”
September 14th, 2011 | CyberBullying, Facebook, Internet Safety, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, an A-List starlet becomes the victim of an embarrassing cell phone hack, an Internet troll is given a jail sentence for mocking dead teens online, and FOSI has some uplifting information on teens and online safety.
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TMZ reports that A-List actress Scarlett Johansson is seeking assistance from the FBI to help track down the individual responsible for hacking into her cell phone and posting self-taken nude photos online. Johansson isn’t the first celebrity to have nude photos wind up online. Actresses Vanessa Hudgens and Jessica Alba also have been the victims of hackers seeking out illicit images.
A new survey from the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) found that 96% of parents have had a conversation with their kids about what they should and should not do online. The survey also revealed that 93% of parents set rules about Internet use. These findings suggest that more parents are becoming aware of the importance of online safety issues and taking smart, proactive steps to protect their kids online.
Facebook representatives are scheduled to appear before a congressional hearing today on the subject of children’s online safety. According to CBS News, “The appearance by Facebook officials follows one last week by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who also met with members of Congress about privacy issues.” At issue is how websites track information about Internet users while they browse the Web. Several members of Congress believe that there should be laws in place to prevent Web companies from collecting data on children. Web companies have disagreed with this stance, arguing that legislation will be too unwieldy.
Yesterday, Facebook announced a new privacy feature that is similar in function to Google+’s “Social Circles” feature. According to the Washington Post, “the optional features include smart lists, which automatically group a users’ friends into work, school, family and location-based groups, which can be edited by the user.” Facebook’s recent push to offer more privacy controls comes on the heels of Google’s launch of Google+, which was widely praised for its intuitive privacy settings.
In the U.K., a 25-year-old man has been jailed for 18 weeks after he was arrested for sending mocking messages to the families of two dead teenagers online. The man, who did not know the victims and lived alone, pleaded guilty to two counts of sending malicious communications. In his ruling, the judge stated that the offenses were so serious that “only a custodial sentence could be justified.” As part of the sentence, the man must also refrain from using social networking websites for five years and inform police when he acquires a new computer or web-enabled phone.
September 13th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits, Student Online Reputation | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we offer advice for parents of bullies, ponder what happens to our digital profiles when we die, share the story of a fugitive busted by Facebook, and consider how a big celebrity’s Twitter complaint might hurt one’s online reputation.
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A recent study showed that 77% of kids have reported being bullied at some point. While the number of bullying victims is staggering, it begs an important question. If so many kids are being bullied, then there must be a lot of bullies, and that means that parents need to consider the unfortunate possibility that their son or daughter is the bully. This article from The Stir advises parents on ways to determine if their child is a bully and steps to take to limit bullying behavior.
This AFP article poses some interesting questions: “When you die, does your Facebook account die with you? Or that online photo album? What about your iTunes playlist, blogs or tweets?” As we live more and more of our lives online, the issue of what happens to our online content after we die has become more complex. Most websites aren’t equipped to deal with the digital death of a user, and so what happens is that an individual’s online content is trapped in a sort-of limbo. This unusual circumstance has spurred the creation of a small economy focused around digital afterlife services, that help an individual’s surviving relatives manage his or her accounts after death.
Arizona police arrested a man wanted in Oregon for negligent child support after they were tipped off to his location by someone who saw the fugitive “check-in” to a restaurant on Facebook. This is not the first story of a criminal getting caught because of Facebook. Recently, an Italian mobster was arrested after investigators tracked him down via his girlfriend’s Facebook photos.
If someone calls you out for doing a bad job on Twitter, it might not look to good to your boss. But when that person is Hollywood actor Alex Baldwin, it’s especially bad. Baldwin recently took to Twitter to criticize a Starbucks employee that he thought had an attitude problem. One can argue that Baldwin’s complaint should be taken with a grain of salt (“You know how those prima donna celebrities are.”) but this story demonstrates how important it is for businesses and their employees to always be thinking about how their actions can lead to a negative online reputation.
September 12th, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, Google’s Street View cameras turn up something naughty, Facebook wins the Internet’s popularity contest, a student council president risks his office over a few dumb tweets, and Leslie Gaines-Ross offers smart reputation management advice.
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When Google’s Street View cars are in your neighborhood, you should probably shut your blinds. Better yet, don’t stand fully nude in your backyard. Otherwise, you’ll end up like the Florida woman who was snapped standing naked outside of her home by Google cameras. According to The Huffington Post, “Typically, Google Street View pixelates faces, license plates and other potentially identifying information. However, this nude photo somehow slipped by Google’s censors.”
The Huffington Post reports that “according to new research from Nielsen’s ‘The Social Media Report,’ American Internet users now devote more time to Facebook than any other website, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world’s largest social networking site.” Coming in at a distant second was Yahoo (17.2 billion minutes), followed by Google (12.5 billion minutes).
The student body president of a South Carolina college faces impeachment from his position following complaints over a handful of inappropriate and offensive tweets. The tweets, which have been called sexist and homophobic, include disparaging remarks about fellow elected officers on the student government council.
In a Wall Street Journal blog post, Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at global communications firm Weber Shandwick and board member of the Online Reputation Management Association, offers five tips on how big brands can weather a digital crisis and protect their online reputations. As Gaines-Ross explains, quick action is important because, “a company that handles itself online says much about its ability to execute in this modern age and helps define how a company is perceived.”
September 9th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a new bill that would punish companies for privacy breaches, changes to Missouri’s ban on social networking for teachers, and why Twitter CEO Dick Costolo likes having anonymous users on his site.
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A new bill in the U.S. Senate would penalize companies for security breaches that compromise consumer privacy. The bill comes in response to a number of high-profile breaches in the past year. According to VentureBeat, “Democratic Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, who sponsored the bill, said many of the more recent security breaches (like Sony’s Playstation Online fiasco) were very preventable.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has agreed to work with the German government on developing a voluntary privacy code of conduct that will “cover issues such as strengthening media literacy and transmitting data in accordance with German law.” Facebook and numerous other Internet companies have faced stiff resistance from privacy regulators in Germany, which is one of the most privacy-conscious European countries.
Boston Globe career columnist Scott Kirsner wants to help the unemployed get back to work, so he turned to a host of Internet experts and hiring managers to offer advice on how to use social media to find a new job. The article has lots of great tips and insights on how an individual’s online reputation can help them stand out from other job applicants.
Following a federal judge’s decision to halt the implementation of a Missouri social networking ban between teachers and students, the sponsor of the bill has made some changes to the legislation that will likely circumvent the injunction. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, “In her new version, [Sen. Jane Cunningham] gives local school districts complete control over the subject but does impose a requirement that each district have a policy on social media contacts between staff and students.”
While Google and Facebook are on the defensive over their “real name only” policies, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has gone out of his way to champion Twitter’s pseudonym-friendly service. According to Wired, Costolo recently argued that real name policies are increase the value of advertising on the site at the expense of the user. Instead, Costolo says, “[Twitter is] are more interested in serving our users first, and we think by serving that by serving our users first, we will have a better platform for marketers and advertisers.”
