Feed Your Career

I am doing research for my webinar coming up this week on Facebook.  Nothing like teaching a subject to improve your knowledge base.  I have spent hours upon hours reading up on Facebook privacy.  My head is spinning.  It has inspired me to do a much longer than normal blog posting on the critical privacy issues I want to alert others to.  Also, because there is so much you really need to understand for privacy, I am splitting this into two postings: Part I and Part II.

To get started, I want to share real-life situations that have happened with Facebook.

A business professional was visiting a former employer and chatting with friends in person and one of them asked her about an upcoming trip to Florida.  She had not even told her kids yet.  She was shocked.  She had held off on saying anything because she was a new hire at another company and was waiting for the right opportunity to say anything.  She found out the former co-worker and her husband were both part of the same regional network on Facebook, and that was how the former co-worked obtained access to his personal page. Her husband immediately changed his privacy settings, but it could have cost her job.

A New Albany woman’s house was after she posted a message that she and her fiancee would be out for the evening.  One of the intruders had added her as a friend on Facebook

An employee bought tickets online for a movie and posted an update on their Facebook.  The timestamp on the update was during work hours.  The employee was reprimanded.

Student was kicked out of the National Honor Society after creating a Facebook page that criticized the school.

Teenager fired from job after calling job boring on Facebook.  The teen did not name the company in their comment, but coworkers saw the posting and knew what it was referring to.

Do I have your attention?!  Privacy is a huge concern for anyone with a Facebook account.

Important, once you open an account, you need to take responsibility for your privacy.  I hear people often say – I have an account, but barely use it.  That will not fly when you find out your name ends up associated with …

I do recommend you go through all your privacy settings and think carefully about what you are aiming to achieve on Facebook – make new connections or keep in touch with your current connections (friends and family).  Also, there are many cases of people getting fired, kicked out of school, being passed over for a new job because of something they said or shared or a photo on Facebook.

Golden Rule: if your mom, boss or future boss can not read it, don’t post it up.  Don’t assume once photos or comments are deleted they are not saved somewhere.  The techie term is the data may be inactivated, but in most cases it is not deleted.  Since the beginning of the internet companies have been saving copies of the internet and creating huge databases for employers looking to hire to go through and search on possible candidates.  We know that roughly 40% of employers right now check on Facebook before making a hiring decision.  If they could read all your deleted postings and pictures would you be shaking right now?

Below I am outlining six significant privacy concerns. These hold true as top concerns too if you have a teenager in the house.  It is hard for teens to understand or appreciate the big picture and how some of these may impact their future significantly in ten or twenty years.  Do not assume they have set their privacy settings appropriately.  Sit down with them and go through these with them.

1. Who Can See What on Your Profile

A common mistake for new users is to assume their profile information is viewable to only “Friends.”  Facebook default is for “Everyone” which means the public can view information on your profile unless it is changed through your privacy settings.  A key piece of information you want to in all cases protect is your birthday.  Birthdays are used by criminals for identity theft. Make sure it is blocked so only yourself can see it.

To change any privacy settings go to the upper right hand side of Facebook page and see drop down under “Account.”  Select “Privacy Settings” and from the list on the privacy settings page click on “Profile.”  This takes you to a page that you can change who can view each piece of profile information including your birthday.  Change birthday setting to “Only Me.”

To show only month and day for birthday – select “Info” tab under your name in top middle of the page.  Across from “About Me” you can see Edit option.  Click on that and all these fields are now editable and one option across from “Birthday” is how to show your birthday.

Before making any changes to your privacy settings, you may want to create some lists for all your contacts (Facebook lumps together and calls them “Friends”) and allow access to different profile pieces based on your lists.  This is my preference.  I recommend at least 5 lists: two lists for friends (close friends and more distant friends), two lists for work (those you have met or work with and those that are good contacts but you have never met) and then family.  You may want to make two family lists too – my family is huge and not truly knowing someone when talking privacy is a consideration here.

If you do not have the time to make lists now, the best thing is to change in for your privacy settings all your profile information to allow “Only Friends.” Using any other broader option allows your profile information to be viewed by people you do not know.  Even “Friends of Friends” opens up your profile information to thousands of people you do not know, and “My Networks and Friends” opens you up to anyone in your city, your high school, your college, a professional organization you listed, etc. These are networks you have joined and include the thousands of people that are members of them.

2: Who Can See Your Address and Phone Number

Did you list your address and phone number on Facebook? While this may seem like a slick feature, you do not want people you don’t know to have this information.  My policy is if someone needs it, they can email me and ask for it, I would rather error on safety.  Address and phone number data is used for home burglaries.  All a criminal needs is an innocent sounding update on your page, a tweet, or your blog about getting away for a few days and you have given them all they need to break in while you are away. Go to “Privacy Settings” and click on “Contact Information.”  I go serious with security and have my phone number and address set to “Only Me”.  Again, that is your choice, but think carefully about who needs to have this information easy to access.

As previously described above, you can use your “Friends” lists to designate who gets to see what and/or block certain people or lists from viewing any of your contact information.

3. Search Results

Do you know how searchable you are, both within the Facebook community and on the web? The search default in Facebook is to create a public search listing so others can see a preview of your Facebook profile on search engines, such as Google. That means that when someone searches for your name, they’ll see your Facebook profile picture, as well as any other information you’ve made public, such as your networks, friends, groups, and more. This privacy setting also determines how searchable you are on Facebook.

To change this privacy setting: Go to your “Privacy Settings” page and choose “Search.” There are two privacy settings you can change: your “Facebook Search Results,” which determines who can see your search results on Facebook; and “Public Search Results,” which you can allow or disallow.  At a minimum uncheck “Public Search Results” so your profile is not being found on Google.

Whew, I know that is a lot to digest.  There are 3 more privacy settings I believe are important for you to know.  Those are discussed in Part II.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Privacy: Personal Security Toronado? Part II In the first posting on this topic Facebook privacy I...

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Tags: Facebook, friends, lock, privacy, Social Media, teens

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 1:18 am and is filed under Facebook, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.