Given Facebook’s seemingly endless changes to its privacy settings, the most recent being in December, as well as Facebook’s “newfangled search tool, [which] can allow strangers, along with ‘friends’ on Facebook, to discover who you are, what you like and where you go,” have you taken steps to make sure the information you want to be private really is private? How do you make sure that your friends who are less concerned about privacy don’t inadvertently “suck[] you into their orbit”?
Well, aside from giving up Facebook entirely (or perhaps simply taking a break for a while, which apparently 61% of adult Facebook users have done at some point, according to a new Pew Research Center study), the New York Times recently published an article called, Staying Private on the New Facebook, that includes some helpful tips and new tools that can help you maintain at least a modicum of privacy.
The author, Somini Sengupta, suggests asking yourself these basic questions:
- How would you like to be found?
- What do you want the world to know about you?
- Do you mind being tracked by advertisers?
- Whom do you want to befriend?
Of most interest to me as an employment lawyer was the question of “what do you want the world to know about you?” As the author points out, depending on how you have your privacy settings adjusted, you may be broadcasting to the world basic facts like your gender and birthdate. While you may not care about keeping this information private, we’ve talked before that employers who use social media to vet job applicants may be advised to screen out this kind of information since gender and age are protected by state and federal anti-discrimination laws. (See The Summary – Social Media Best Practices in Recruiting, Sourcing and Hiring.)
Aside from disclosing protected class information, what about all those pictures you’ve seen on Facebook of your friends (or yourself) having a bit too much fun on the weekend? Well thank goodness there’s an app for that. A team of college students have created a tool called Simplewash that searches for “profanity, references to drugs and other faux pas that you do not necessarily want, say, a law school admissions officer to see.” There’s also a tool called Socioclean. While these tools only work for Facebook, both sites appear to be working on adding other social networks.
While taking the time to adjust privacy settings and scrub your social media content until it’s squeaky clean may not be very fun, it’s definitely worthwhile. It is also wise to remember that your interaction with others on Facebook opens up some of your information to “friends” of your friends and even the public, depending on how your friends adjust their privacy settings. So, how do you protect your privacy online? If you have any tools or tips for safeguarding privacy online, we’d love to hear from you.
