Entries from September 2011 ↓
September 8th, 2011 | Careers, Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research, Student Online Reputation | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a new Microsoft study, a huge privacy breach involving 20,000 hospital patients, and one Applebee’s worker’s stand for self-expression online.
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A new Microsoft study shows that “before posting personal information online, more than half of U.S. teens and parents don’t truly consider the potential consequences of their actions.” The study also showed that while teens recognize “the importance of limiting what they share online,” they still reveal more personal data than their parents and that 6 in 10 teens admit to having “friends” online that they have never met in real life. This data reveals the importance of online reputation management and digital citizenship – two important issues that Microsoft is addressing through a new white paper called “Fostering Digital Citizenship” and a Teen Reputation Guide.
The New York Times reports that “a medical privacy breach at Stanford University’s hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., led to the public posting of medical records for 20,000 emergency room patients, including names and diagnosis codes, on a commercial Web site for nearly a year.” This isn’t the first time that medical data has been exposed online. The Times writes that “records compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services reveal that personal medical data for more than 11 million people has been improperly exposed during the last two years alone.”
An Applebee’s worker claims that his job has been threatened by his refusal to sign an agreement from his employer that restricts his right to post negative content about Applebee’s online. The man, who has had no problems with the company in the past, says that he is concerned the agreement would stifle his freedom of expression. The Applebee’s story comes at an interesting time. The National Labor Relations Board recently issued a report outlining when companies can and can’t fire employees for their online profiles and a judge ruled that several non-profit employees were unjustly fired for their Facebook comments.
The Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) requires companies to block children under the age of 13 from accessing their websites. But this is often easier said than done, especially if you’re Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website. This article from ZDNet discusses how Facebook approaches the problem and why the website claims that “it is difficult is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don’t circumvent a system or lie about their age.”
New York Times tech reporter Jenna Wortham writes about a new mobile app called Blendr, which combines social networking with location check-in technology to help users “find someone to meet nearby, right now.” The app includes some privacy restrictions, including the ability to narrowly tailor what type of person can access one’s profile, but it is still likely something that a privacy-conscious individual would be leery to use. Nevertheless, the creator of Blendr’s previous mobile app Grindr (which offers a similar service for the gay community) has been very successful with 2.6 million users, proving the viability of the concept.
September 7th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about Twitter’s spam problem, why Americans aren’t using location check-in services, and the budding world of photo hacking.
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Security company BitDefender thinks Twitter has a spam problem. According to statistics compiled by the firm, and reported in The Daily Mail, one percent of the 350 billion message impressions on Twitter each day, “are malicious, containing spam, or links to sites containing viruses or other malicious software. That means that 3.5 billion nasty Tweets are sent every day. For an average user that can mean up to 17 dangerous Tweets per day.” The article notes that the use of URL shorteners has greatly increased the number of malicious messages on the site.
USA Today tech reporter Byron Acohido explains how mobile apps and social networking sites pose risks to children under the age of 13 and often risk violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The article also highlights the disconnect between children and parents online. Quoting the story, “A recent survey by anti-virus firm AVG found roughly half of children ages 6 through 9 regularly interact with friends online, yet 58% of their parents admitted to not being knowledgeable about social networks.”
An Ohio women has settled an invasion of privacy lawsuit with a software manufacturer and police department after she claimed that “her privacy was violated when [the company] grabbed sexually explicit images of her and her boyfriend from a computer she didn’t know was stolen.” The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. As technology advances, questions of privacy are becoming more and more complicated. This story, with its multiple twists and turns, would have been very interesting.
With photo sharing being one of the biggest and most time-consuming hobbies on the Internet, it’s no wonder that CNN has highlighted photo hacking as a hotbed of new innovation in the start-up economy. This article from CNN Money discusses how several popular start-up companies are breaking down the idea of photo sharing and rebuilding it in new and interesting ways. Sometimes, these photo hacking exercises push the boundaries of personal privacy, especially when they involve facial recognition. Despite privacy concerns, companies continue to invest in this “gray area” of software development.
Location check-in services aren’t catching on in the United States according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The Pew data shows that 23% of Americans are using location data for things like maps and shopping, but only 4% are using check-in services to share their locations with friends online. The issue of personal privacy appears to be a big factor in Americans’ decision to not share their locations online.
September 6th, 2011 | Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Parenting, Quick Hits, Student Online Reputation, Twitter | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about an unusual criminal case in Mexico, a recently discovered Facebook flaw, one dad’s beef with Facebook, and some advice for college students on online reputation management.
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Two people in Mexico are facing up to 30 years in prison for allegedly causing a panic with their Twitter updates. The Huffington Post reports that the individuals tweeted updates about an alleged attack at a local school where gunmen were kidnapping children. The reports turned out to be untrue, but the panic caused by the messages supposedly led to 28 car accidents and the collapse of the emergency response telephone system. The defendants in the case say that they weren’t tweeting maliciously, but were merely passing on information that they had heard. Numerous civil rights groups have petitioned for the pair to face lesser charges.
A flaw in Facebook allows page administrators to remove the original creator of the page. ZDNet explains that, while it is the original creator who assigns the administrators, new admins shouldn’t be able to remove the original creator according to Facebook’s written policy. This flaw poses a security risk, because “if [an admin] account gets hijacked by someone else, in addition to their account, your Facebook Page could be taken over as well.”
A dad in Northern Ireland is suing Facebook after discovering sexually provocative pictures of his 12-year-old daughter on the site. The dad argues that Facebook isn’t doing enough to enforce its own policy of restricting children 13 and under from accessing the site. Of course, it’s nothing new for under-13 kids to join Facebook, either with or without permission. In May, a Facebook spokesperson said that the site bans 20,000 underage Faceook accounts everyday.
This article in the Toronto Sun explains why students need to be extra careful about protecting their online reputations. Quoting the article, “It used to be that a university student could go out to a wild party, drink their face off, pull some embarrassing stunts before stumbling home and the only record would be a conversation among friends later. Not that we’re condoning the behaviour, but at least it only existed over a 24-hour period. These days, it’s all archived. And the people paying attention could be the ones writing your future paycheque.”
September 2nd, 2011 | CyberBullying, Facebook, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we talk about a new anti-bullying campaign, why celebrities should change their online passwords, the fine line politicians walk on Twitter, and how healthcare professionals are usually responsible for health information breaches.
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Popular teen singer Cody Simpson is putting his influence and massive online following to good use as the leader of a new anti-bullying initiative called Defeat the Label. Simpson joins numerous other celebrities in the campaign, which seeks to put a stop to bullying among kids and teens. Bullying, particularly online bullying, has become a severe problem for the nation’s youth, represented tragically by the high-profile suicides of numerous teens such as Phoebe Prince.
A spin-off group of the hacker collective Anonymous has its sights set on Hollywood and has already scored some high-profile hacks. According to PCWorld, the group has posted celebrity phone numbers, a film script for a movie currently in production, and even nude photos of the female rapper Kreayshawn. The group’s motives don’t seem to extend much beyond a desire to embarrass celebrities and bask in the subsequent media attention.
A UK politician has apologized after calling a constituent the “village idiot” on Twitter following a debate about the National Health Service (NHS). The incident demonstrates the fine line public figures, particularly politicians, walk between engaging in discourse online and saying something that can damage their online reputations.
According to the 2011 Survey of Patient Privacy Breaches from Veriphyr, “more than 70 percent of organizations surveyed were targets of one or more breaches of PHI within the last 12 months. And, insiders were responsible for the majority of breaches, with 35 percent taking an unauthorized look at medical data of fellow employees and 27 percent peeking at records of friends and relatives.”
September 1st, 2011 | Careers, Facebook, Legal Issues, Online Reputation Management, Privacy, Quick Hits, Research | Rob Frappier
In today’s Quick Hits, we have two stories on the risky relationship between teachers and social networking as well as some information on Internet tracking, location tracking, and which of your Facebook friends is most likely to expose your private information.
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A UK sex-ed teacher was found guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” after students discovered him in an adult video online. The teacher, who also worked as a stripper using a different name, was temporarily suspended pending a hearing, but is still allowed to teach. The school council acknowledged his argument that his personal life has no bearing on his professional qualifications as a teacher, but insisted that he discontinue his extracurricular activities anyway in keeping with the “widely held public view that such work is not acceptable conduct for a teacher.”
The New York Daily News reports that, “a new policy in the Dayton Public School systems bars instructors from friending their students on Facebook, along with instant messaging or texting with the kids.” This policy echos a similar proposition from the state of Missouri, which banned teachers from interacting with students online. Last week, that law was temporarily halted by a federal judge. The difference between the Dayton policy and the state-wide Missouri law is that the Dayton policy only extended to the school district and that it specifically barred “friending,” as opposed to all online contact.
Some of your friends are more apt to gossip than others, but how can you be sure which ones might spill your secrets? The Globe and Mail shares a report from Pritam Gundecha at Arizona State University. According to Gundecha’s analysis, you should look at what your friend is sharing to help cue you as to their privacy awareness. For example, “around 80 per cent of users are happy to disclose their gender, but less than 1 per cent share their home address. That suggests people publicizing their address aren’t particularly privacy-conscious and you might want to avoid them.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently released a button that advertisers can place in their ads that allows users to opt-out of Internet tracking. The do not track button is one of several self-regulatory efforts aimed at preventing legislative action against online trackers. However, the button may not be effective and has already seen criticism from consumer privacy groups. According to The Street, Carmen Balber, Washington director for Consumer Watchdog, criticized the program saying, ”this industry program is another example of the failure of self-regulation to protect consumers from unwanted monitoring of every move they make on the internet and their mobile devices.”
CNET’s Declan McCullagh reports that security researcher Samy Kamkar has discovered that Microsoft is tracking users’ locations via software in its mobile devices. Quoting CNET, “the Camera application sends the device’s location–complete with latitude and longitude, a unique ID, and nearby Wi-Fi access points–to Microsoft even when the user has not given the app permission to do so.” Microsoft hasn’t commented on the claim.
