The Internet is no longer the Wild West - 3 Cautionary tales from online

The information commissioner in the UK stated that up to 5 million young people have profile updates on a social media site that could adversely affect education or job prospects.  So are you monitoring who is saying what and how online?

Here are some cautionary tales about why we are not anonymous online anymore and why we shouldn't be.

(Click on the headers for links to the original stories)

Tale Number 1 - Should folks be anonymous at all times?

This was a recent story of a blogger in the US who wrote some alleged defamatory stories about a Canadian model.  The model took Google (who owned the blogspot site involved) to court to reveal the name of the blogger for legal purposes - which Google relented to when told to do so in court.  Ironically the blogger is now suing Google for invasion of privacy.  This is a classic case of someone thinking they are bullet proof online because they are not making their names public.  So do you allow people to post anonymously?  Is there a reason for this?  Are you covered legally for people adding things onto your website?  Have you updated your Privacy Policy or terms and conditions lately? (Do you have a terms and conditions?).

Tale Number 2 - There is nowhere to hide.

This tale concerns a seemingly standard blog around a new Intel security advert.  The blogger (Beth Granter) had built the blog around the repetitiveness of the advert and how it looked after a while like animal cruelty.  She had some general comments then a fairly aggressive comment made by an anonymous blogger.  After this she got a comment form the advertising agency involved thanking her for her comments and taking on board her opinions.  This would have all stopped there and the agency would have come off pretty good...if it wasn't for the fact that your IP address does not hide you from the world.  Beth checked the IP address of the aggressive guy and the Ad agency...and funnily they both came from the same office.  Major egg on the face there. 

Tale Number 3 - Make sure things are in Context.

This one is much closer to home.  What happened here was that I had made a comment on twitter about the whole #boycottscotland debate which was in regards to a group in the US stating that Scotland should be boycotted due to the Lockerbie bomber being released.  Now I'm not getting into the politics of the issue but there was a strong push back from people in Scotland who equally disagreed with the release but felt that boycotting the entire country and that country's products was a little knee jerk. However I made a comment and a former Blackbaud support person who worked with us for years replied with this tweet -

       @robmcallen is Blackbaud HQ now boycotting the Support team in Glasgow? Right enough you wouldn't get an e-mail or phone call telling you

So in context this tweet was just a former colleague joking around.  However as we have a great listening strategy here at Blackbaud this tweet flagged up to our marketing folks who thought something was rotten in Denmark between the departments and this external person had gotten wind of it.  Hilarious but a cautionary tale of things being taken out of context online.  So trying not to use ambiguous language is important...text on a page is easily misconstrued.

Just a short one today.