The point of having social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and the like to be able to share aspects of your life with your friends and the rest of the world.
Which is fine when you are going out to dinner with your parents or working on a class project.
But what about when you are sharing pictures of the party you went to last night. The party where you were drinking and you are under age. The party that violates the rules of your athletic scholarship. The photo that shows you passed out as an example of how you lived in college five years ago that an employer wants to look at today.
There’s been considerable talk lately about how much privacy you actually have with your social media. Start with the notion that anything that you don’t make private is by definition public. So anything that you post to social media that you don’t hide can be seen by everyone. Including your parents, your future employers, reporters, and the police.
But what about the things you hide behind a password and privacy settings? Consider the following:
- A Minnesota middle-school girl says she was forced to reveal her Facebook password to police and school officials.
- Government agencies and colleges are asking for applicants’ Facebook passwords.
- What can you do when an employer asks for your password?
Just say, “No?” How about student athletes being forced to friend coaches? - Revolutionaries in Middle East are being forced to give up social media passwords upon arrest.
Have you looked at what is publicly available about you on social media and the Web? Perhaps you should.
And finally…. Justice Antonin Scalia didn’t like it much when a law class investigated him online.