Posts Tagged ‘social media’

A Cyber Bullying Victim Shares His Experience

Monday, October 1st, 2012

Today is October 1st, which is also Blue Shirt Day™ World Day of Bullying Prevention©

Cyber bullying is a topic I cover in my Q3 2012 issue of Protecting Information Journal, and my youth reporter for this quarter’s issue, Lexx, wrote about his personal experience with cyber bullying.  Typically only my subscribers get to read these great articles, but in honor of Blue Shirt Day™ I want everyone to have a chance to read his article that provides important insights into how so many of our children are dealing with this growing problem.  Here it is in its entirety; please provide feedback, not only to me, but also for my talented youth reporter! (more…)

Privacy Scares from the Ghosts of Job Applicants Past

Monday, September 17th, 2012

There is a topic that has been coming up, over and over and over again over the past 12 years, that I’ve never seen addressed in other publications.  What does your organization do with all the personal information you collect from job applicants?  Consider a real situation I encountered around ten years ago. (more…)

6 Questions to Ask before Posting to Social Networks

Friday, August 31st, 2012

Every day I see yet another (often another dozen) situation where employees misused, abused or otherwise accused social media sites to the chagrin of their employers.   Businesses need to make a coordinated effort, using a combination of policies, training and technology to mitigate the risks (to personnel as well as the business) of workers using social media sites.  Today let’s consider what organizations should be telling their workers about social media information security and privacy. (more…)

Are Emails of Public Company Execs Private or Public?

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

At the end of July, Twitter suspended the account of Guy Adams, a reporter for the UK’s Independent, after he posted the corporate email address of Jim Bell, Producer of NBC Olympics, and said less than flattering things about his expectations for how NBC would do in their Olympics coverage.   Adams reportedly claimed that he felt the email account was open to public use since it showed up in Google search results.  However, privacy concerns were widely expressed over his decision to share the executive’s contact details, and thus his account was suspended.  Apparently NBC complained, Twitter listened, and Guy’s account was shut down. After a bit of hullabaloo, Twitter then changed heart and re-activated his Twitter account.  I received several great questions related to this, collectively boiling down to the following five: (more…)

6 Good Reasons NOT To Ask For Facebook Passwords

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

In case you’ve not paid attention to the news in the past week, there has been a barrage of stories (over 1500 turned up in a quick online search) about organizations asking job applicants and employees for their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking passwords.  It’s a hot topic folks! I’ve listed a bunch of them at the end of this post.  Compelled password disclosure is a very bad idea for organizations to do for many reasons.  Here are six that should be compelling to business management: (more…)

Is Information Found Online Legally Fair Game To Use For Marketing?

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Social media sites are booming.  The amount of personal information folks are choosing to post to them, such as photos, videos, original stories, thoughts, gossip, and so on, is exploding.  Marketers are drooling at the prospect of using all that “free” information.  Well, it’s really not free, folks. (more…)

Physician Learns A Hard PHI Lesson

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

News broke  yesterday about a physician in Rhode Island, at the Westerly Hospital, who was sanctioned for posting protected health information (PHI) on her Facebook page: (more…)

A Conversation About Privacy On the Internet with Rafal Los

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

I recently engaged in an interesting discussion with Rafal Los about the erosion of privacy as it relates to the Internet in general, and social media sites specifically.  I think my readers will some useful points and insights within our conversation; especially considering the often perceived adversarial relationship between anonymity and privacy.  I welcome your feedback!

So here we go… (more…)

3 Privacy Mistakes For Social Media And Marketing

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

I love marketing and sales folks. Our businesses would be lost (well, at least have less revenues) without them! I’ve worked with many different sales and marketing folks throughout the past couple of decades, and I appreciate their enthusiasm and creativity to find ways in which they can help their organizations make more revenue. (more…)