Online Reputation Management Blog

How to Change Your Facebook Privacy Settings

October 7, 2011 by 8 Comments

With the introduction of Timelines and Open Graph at Facebook’s recent f8 conference, many people are concerned about the impact of these changes on online privacy. On Facebook, your name and username, profile picture, gender, user ID/account number and networks are visible to anyone.

If you are one of Facebook’s 800 million users, and you are concerned about who can access your personal information online, it takes only a minute to go private.

Follow these 8 steps below to secure your account and take control over your online image.

1. Log into your Facebook account and click on the dropdown arrow next to “Home” on the upper right hand corner. Use the drop down and click on the “Privacy Settings” link.

2. Under “Control Your Default Privacy,” click on the “Custom” link.

3. The screen will show you four options to select:  “Friends of Friends,” “Friends,” “Specific People or Lists” and “Only Me.” You can also hide posts from specific people or lists by typing the name in the blank space provided.

4. Then, scroll down to the “How You Connect” section.  Click on “Edit Settings” and after the popup use the drop down menus on the right side of your screen to select who you want to view this information.

5. Next, be sure to click “Edit Settings” to the right of the “How Tags Work” section.  A popup window will appear and you can adjust the “Maximum Profile Visibility” settings and adjust your default settings to “Off.”

6. Scroll down to the “Apps and Websites” section.  Click the “Edit Settings” link and follow the drop down menus on the right side of your popup to restrict which apps, games and websites you share your information with.

7. Click on the “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” link to protect information you may have shared publicly in the past.

8. Scroll to the top of the “Privacy” settings page  to make sure that your new settings have all been applied.

Tell all your “Friends” how easy it is to change your privacy settings on Facebook and protect your privacy.

Filed Under: Facebook, Privacy Tagged With: , , , ,

NLRB Defends Employee Free Speech on Facebook

September 19, 2011 by 1 Comment

In my post, Do You Need a Social Media Policy, I mentioned that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a recent report detailing the outcome of its investigations into 14 cases involving employee use of social media and employers’ social media policies.

In four cases involving employees’ use of Facebook, the NLRB’s Division of Advice found that the employees were engaged in “protected concerted activity” because they were discussing terms and conditions of employment with fellow employees. In five other cases involving Facebook or Twitter posts, the NLRB found that the activity was not protected.

Two weeks ago, in Hispanics United of Buffalo, Inc. v. Ortiz, an Administrative Law Judge ruled that five employees who were terminated because of comments they made on their Facebook page should be rehired.  The judge ordered the employees back to work, and held that the employees must be paid for their time off.

The Facebook conversations took place on a Saturday (outside of work hours) and involved a coworker who seemed to think her fellow employees were not doing enough to help their clients and the angry response by the affected employee followed by some crude complaints about working conditions by other employees.

The cases that have come before the NLRB, are generally decided on question of whether the social media activity of an employee is “concerted activity” that would be protected under the law and/or whether the employer’s social media policy is overly broad.

In this most recent case, the judge noted that “[e]mployees have a protected right to discuss matters affecting their employment amongst themselves.”  The fact that the protected discussion is taking place in a public setting, visible to millions of non-employees for an indefinite period of time, did not affect the ultimate resolution of the case.

In the context of the NLRB’s social media decisions, factors used to determine whether the employee activity is “concerted activity” typically include:

  • Whether the employee discussed the post with other employees
  • Whether other employees responded to the posts
  • Whether the post was intended to prompt group action
  • Whether the post represented the collective concerns of employees

Individual concerns or complaints about an employer, broadly publicized on the internet, are unlikely to be deemed protected activity.  However, as some of the cases illustrate, in the 24/7 workplace, the intersection of work and social network can blur.

Policies that would “reasonably tend to chill employees in the exercise of their rights” under the National Labor Relations Act, including the right to engage in protected concerted activity, are unlawful.

The lessons gleaned from recent NLRB case law indicate that companies will need to carefully balance their online reputation management goals with labor law requirements.

Filed Under: Facebook, Privacy Tagged With: , , , ,

Facial Recognition Technology and Online Privacy

August 9, 2011 by 3 Comments

 

Facial recognition technology refers to computer-based systems that are able to automatically detect and identify human faces.  These systems utilize a complex facial recognition algorithm. First, the facial recognition system is able to recognize a human face and isolate the face from the rest of the photograph.  The technology is able to distinguish features such as the distance between the eyes, the shape of cheek bones, nose, mouth or chin and compare these nodal points from a computerized database of pictures to find a match.  Image quality, lighting conditions and the distance and angle of the photograph will all affect the accuracy of the match, however technology is improving rapidly to compensate for these limiting factors. 

 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint, joined by the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse recommending an investigation of Facebook’s privacy practices, in particular prohibiting the collection of users’ biometric data without affirmative opt-in consent.  With more than 750 million active users, Facebook is the most popular social network in history.  Facebook has also amassed the largest collection of photographs in the history of the world – 60 billion photographs.

 

For privacy advocates the problem is obvious. With 71% of US adults registered as Facebook users sharing more personal information in one place than at any time in history, an unparalleled repository of digital images, the technology to identify users (with or without their permission) and an estimated pre-IPO valuation of $100 billion, Facebook is the most powerful company in the world.

 

It was Facebook’s Tag Suggestion tool that got the Palo Alto company in some recent trouble.  The technology scans newly uploaded photos, searches images that have been previously uploaded to the site, then attempts to match faces and suggest name tags. When a match is made, Facebook alerts the person uploading the photos and invites them to "tag," or identify, the person in the photo.  It’s getting tougher to keep those embarrassing bachelor party pictures a secret from your wife.

 

A research team at Carnegie Mellon University recently published a study whereby they were able to identify individuals on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through pseudonyms. In a second experiment, they identified students walking on campus — based on their profile photos on Facebook. In a third experiment, the research team predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces.

 

As facial recognition technology collides with social media, it is going to take a lot of education and maybe even regulation to protect our online privacy in the 21st century.

Filed Under: Facebook, Privacy Tagged With: , , , ,
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