During the recruiting process, some employers will ask potential employees for access to their social media accounts to get more information about them. Nearly all applicants “agree to this voluntary review, because they need or want the job.” But is this fair? A new infographic examines the problem.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
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Viacom Wins Reversal in Landmark YouTube Case (Reuters)
A U.S. appeals court dealt Google Inc a major defeat by reviving lawsuits by Viacom Inc, the English Premier League and various other media companies over the use of copyrighted videos on Google’s YouTube service without permission. Bloomberg Viacom sued in 2007, seeking $1 billion in damages and claiming that YouTube users were illegally uploading thousands of videos of Viacom television programs, such as South Park and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and movies from its Paramount Pictures studio. ZDNet The case translates to putting the burden of responsibility back on the website owner, rather than the uploader, which could send massive ripples through the online community from search engines to social networks, like Facebook and Google+. Gizmodo The outcome of the case will hinge entirely on whether YouTube “knew” that all of this copyrighted material was out there and what “knowing” actually means. Read more
Social media is more popular than ever but unfortunately, so are viruses, malware and scams. For this reason, it’s more important than ever before for social media users to familiarize themselves with the basics of online security.
As a social media professional and as parent of a 12 year old girl and 10 year old boy I have a different perspective on the use of social media by my kids than the average parent. I am all too knowledgeable on the pluses of my kids using it and of the risks and dangers.
I know the difference between hype and reality when it comes to my kids’ safety. As with all things, sometimes it’s best that kids learn things on their own and at other times we need protect them. We don’t leave dangerous drugs on the kitchen table when toddlers are around and so we need to approach social media the same way. I’ve prepare my top Five list of things as parents we can do to mitigate any dangers of our kids using social media properties.
When you download an application, you’re giving it a certain level of trust. We’ve all been in the position where we download an application and within minutes we’v been asked multiple times to “log in with Facebook to invite all your friends.” We quickly remove the application. What if the application covertly uploaded everyone one of your address book contacts to its own servers? Unfortunately, that’s the case with Path, a popular iPhone social app that we’ve covered here in the past. The fact was broken this morning by Arun Thampi, a blogger in Singapore.
Over the course of the last few years China has been running a trial of getting social networks to collect the full real names of all of their users. Currently on popular networks like the Twitter clone Sina Weibo and Facebook clone QQ, users have the ability to be anonymous. The government states it is simply doing this for accountability purposes, but in 2010 a woman was sentenced to a year in a labor camp due to a retweet.
They’re now expanding the trial program to all over China.
Relatively small tech company acquisitions are usually only interesting to people who follow the tech industry. And, that’s how Twitter’s purchase of the security and privacy specialist firm Whispter Systems was perceived when most of us read news items like this one on Forbes: Twitter Acquires Moxie Marlinspike’s Encryption Startup Whisper Systems
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Earlier this year I noticed that estimtes indicated that Android Malware had increased 700% betwen January 2010 and June 2011. This was based on two separate reports by Juniper/Bullguard and McAfee. The Loop cites a more recent report from Juniper for the period from July and October 2011 that Android malware had increase 472% in those few short months.
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No matter what services you use within social media — be it games, video or photos — you should be knowledgeable of how your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is protected.
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If you purchase anything on the Internet you probably are in the habit of making sure you are using a secure connection from a desktop web browser and you look for the lock button in the browser. Most of popular web sites like Facebook and Gmail also now use HTTPS to secure your communication, but that was not always the case. While it is fairly easy to tell whether a web browser is securing the data you send, it is not as easy to tell with other apps, particularly apps for smartphones and tablets, and that is where Hotspot Shield comes in.
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