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Privacy and social networking is about more than Spam!

Examiner — Whenever I talk to anyone about privacy and the internet, their main concerns are either identity theft or preventing spam. Both of these are, of course, worthwhile concerns.

There’s a few other aspects of internet privacy you may want to take into account, however, and we’ll try and push you in the right direction.

Consider the quote above. Days later, after posting that quote on his Facebook page (and after he removed it, as well), Dan Leone was fired from his position that he held with the Eagles organization for six years. It’s just one of many stories floating around on the Internet involving employees getting firec for their online activities, and it bears repeating.

The anonymity the internet provides and the lack of understanding some people have with various social networking sites can give people the feeling that they can say or do anything. After all, it’s online, it’s not real life.

How can it possibly hurt me? Well, Dan Leone found out the hard way. With more and more people getting online, posting a message on your Facebook or Twitter has become less sending an email to your friends saying “my employer sucks” (although, that’s a bad idea, too) and more standing in front of their offices with a megaphone and saying the same thing.

It’s not just posting offending Facebook statuses towards your employer that’s a bad idea. Employers are actually actively looking at their employees’ social media pages and checking up on them. Sometimes, people save their employers the trouble. Sometimes, you don’t do anything incriminating, but your blogging can cause a conflict of interest at work, like it did with PittGirl.

Let’s also not forget the personal side of this whole thing. It’s one thing to have your boss see your drunken antic pictures on Facebook. How about having your mom or grandma see it?

Which brings me to a good rule of thumb. Before posting anything – anything – online under your own name, you should ask yourself: “How would this affect me if my coworkers or family saw this? Granted, it’s kind of like the old rule of thumb don’t do anything that would make your mother cry (although if I followed that rule, I’d never leave the house except to go to work).

(Just kidding, mom.)

The internet isn’t the Electronic Wild West it used to be – more and more companies are becoming web savvy, not only using the internet to promote their business, but also to communicate with and weed out potential and existing employees. With that in mind, here’s some suggestions.

Learn How To Use The Privacy Settings on Facebook and MySpace.

This is especially important once Facebook implements their Twitter-style real-time search of status updates. This is a great article on different privacy settings available on Facebook, and there’s one about MySpace as well. It’s not going to be 100% foolproof, but it can reduce your chances of someone seeing your posts when you don’t want them to.

Just keep in mind that it might not be 100% possible to keep someone who you haven’t “friended” from seeing what you’ve put on Facebook.

LiveJournal Is An Interesting Alternative.

If you are looking for a good place to post your thoughts and feelings and drunken pictures, Livejournal isn’t a bad idea. One of the original blogging communities, Livejournal gives you the option of only allowing your Livejournal “friends” from seeing your posts. So far, I haven’t found a way to see any of these nonfriend-proof entries so it would appear to be pretty secure. Just make sure you keep in mind who you have on your friends list.

Don’t Use Twitter If You’re Paranoid

By paranoid, I pretty much am referring to everything we’ve talked about so far. While Twitter doesn’t ask for nearly as much personal information as Facebook or MySpace does (essentially name and website – the web’s version of “name, rank and serial number”), it also doesn’t offer nearly as much privacy options as some of the other social networking sites.

Yes, you CAN choose to have only selected people read your Tweets. That sort of defeats the purpose of Twitter, though.

A Little Bit Of Common Sense Goes A Long Way

What’s important to remember is that whatever you do online, you need to keep in mind who is going to be reading it. Because, let’s face it, the only thing worse than being an Eagles fan is being an unemployed Eagles fan.

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