I’ve been using Twitter now (http://www.twitter.com/privacyprof) for three going on four weeks. I’ve found it to be a very great way to be in touch with the latest news and happenings, and also to get in touch with other folks who care about and want to discuss the same types of topics as I do. I also see using Twitter within business organizations as a very good awareness raising tool. More on that in another post. But for now I want to discuss some of the potential personal hazards of tweeting…
Over the past couple of days I saw a couple of very interesting stories tweeted about multiple times by many different people. These covered the negative impacts of having loose lips, or bills if you will, in Twitter posts.
* “Be Careful What You Post”
An employee of the Ketchum agency was visiting Memphis to make a presentation to one of its very large clients, FedEx. The Ketchum employee tweeted derogatory remarks about Memphis before his presentation; basically that he would “die” if he had to live there. Not smart on such a very public podium as Twitter. And yes, he got caught. One of the employees from FedEx in Memphis, a large majority of whose employees are natives of the area, read the tweet. They let him know they did not appreciate his comments.
Lesson? That anyone on Twitter may read your messages, including the people you are putting down or gossiping about! Remember, even if you have protected your Twitter messages, someone else with an open Twitter account that you have allowed to read them may “retweet” (RT) your message and then it could be read by anyone. Searching all tweets for specific terms is a great feature of Twitter.
* “How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job”
This is a very short story, worth reprinting here:
“A lucky job applicant tweeted the following:
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
This tweet caught the attention of Tim Levad, a channel partner advocate for Cisco. To which he responded:
Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.
Ouch! The person who dissed the Cisco offer quickly took their Twitter account private. But Twitter search retained the record.”
Lesson? That anyone on Twitter may read your messages, including the people, and companies, you are putting down or gossiping about! Remember, even if you have protected your Twitter messages, someone else with an open Twitter account that you have allowed to read them may “retweet” (RT) your message and then it could be read by anyone. Yah, same lesson, but worth repeating.
Another lesson is that once your post anything to the Internet, including to Twitter, you may as well accept that it is out there in ad infinitum…the “delete” feature of Twitter is far from being 100% effective.
Keep in mind that, unless you have blocked your posts so that only specific people that you approve of can see them, anyone in the very large and growing Twittersphere can see what you post! You never know who may be reading your messages…your relatives, your friends, your coworkers, your enemies, or your future enemies if you are saying the wrong things in your messages.
If you are responsible for information security or privacy at your organization, have you considered the potential uses and corresponding impacts of personnel participating in microblogs such as Twitter from your corporate network? Or, posting information through them about your business? It would be a good time to think about it and update your policies accordingly, then do some targeted training to the groups that are most likely to need, or want, to tweet, and also provide ongoing awareness communications about the related business information security and privacy issues.
Tags: awareness and training, Information Security, IT compliance, IT training, policies and procedures, privacy awareness, privacy training, risk management, security awareness, security training, social network security, twitter