Thursday, September 5, 2013

Social Media and Privacy

Source: http://catalystxchange.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/privacy.jpg
Social media networks, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin, have invaded almost every household. There's a lot a user can benefit from, meeting other people, reconnecting with old friends, or even help land people a job. With that however, it can take away a job just as fast. Some people had to find out about that the hard way. Due to some deficient privacy policies on Facebook, people have been fired for not following health and safety procedures, to bad mouthing the upper management (http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/living/buzzfeed-social-media-fired).

Maintaining your presence on social media sites is important so that employers are able to find you, however, you must maintain what they see. Some ways to do this are to separate work and play. Create a different work Facebook that is designed to show your professional life and have a different one that you can wild out and show your true colors. Let's admit no one at work is really that boring or stiff. One of my close friends have even gone to the lengths of changing his Facebook name in order to dodge employers from finding him online.



If there are multiple sites that help teach how to maintain your privacy settings, you know that this must be a big deal. Go review your settings and make sure that you're not in jeopardy! (http://www.lavasoft.com/mylavasoft/company/blog/how-to-maintain-your-privacy-on-social-networking-sites)

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2 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 7, 2013 at 7:29 PM

    I feel that you’re correct about how employers tend to scrutinize their employees on social networking sites. I feel that a lot of times, social networking leading to termination can generally be chalked up to simple human carelessness. As a person who practically never updates his Facebook page, I never have had to worry about this.

    It is also true that some people have both professional and social profiles on these websites. However, this to me begs the question whether having professional accounts devalues the laid back, social nature of Facebook. Websites like Linked In are meant for businesses to look at, and I think that professional profiles only really belong at places like Linked In; by creating professional profiles on Facebook, aren’t we really just encouraging our bosses to stick around there and digitally stalk us?

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  2. UnknownSeptember 14, 2013 at 12:06 AM

    Hi Steve,

    I think you are right about the good and bad sides of social media. The first link in your post tells us very interesting stories about thoughtless people who don’t think about the consequences of their posts on social media. Those should remind us to be more careful about what we say on the internet.

    For those who are active on social media should find your second link to privacy tips very helpful. From the technical standpoint, I think those tips are sufficient to help social media users hide their information from the surface.

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