What you need to know about workplace privacy
The conflict between maintaining employee’s personal privacy at the workplace versus employer’s need to monitor their employee has been a constant debate. Finding a balance is quite tricky. I decided to do some reading up on workplace privacy as I’m sure it would generate interest among readers. Below is some of the useful info I pulled up from Privacyrights.org once more. My comments on these will be in italics:
New technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees’ jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the Internet. Such monitoring is virtually unregulated. Therefore, unless company policy specifically states otherwise (and even this is not assured), your employer may listen, watch and read most of your workplace communications.
A 2005 survey by the American Management Association found that three-fourths of employers monitor their employees’ web site visits in order to prevent inappropriate surfing. And 65% use software to block connections to web sites deemed off limits for employees. About a third track keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. Just over half of employers review and retain electronic mail messages.
Over 80% of employers disclose their monitoring practices to employees. And most employers have established policies governing Internet use, including e-mail use (84%) and personal Internet use (81%). – It is good to note of the relatively healthy percentage. I think it is good practice to inquire about your company’s monitoring practices if you realize that they did not disclose anything pertaining to that with you
Telephone Monitoring
Can my employer listen to my phone calls at work?
In most instances, yes
Privacy Tip: The best way to ensure the privacy of your personal calls made at work is to use your own mobile phone, a pay phone, or a separate phone designated by your employer for personal calls.
Can my employer obtain a record of my phone calls?
Yes. Telephone numbers dialed from phone extensions can be recorded by a device called a pen register. It allows the employer to see a list of phone numbers dialed by your extension and the length of each call. This information may be used to evaluate the amount of time spent by employees with clients.
Employers often use pen registers to monitor employees with jobs in which telephones are used extensively. Frequently, employees are concerned that the information gathered from the pen register is unfairly used to evaluate their efficiency with clients without consideration of the quality of service. – knowing this, make sure you use your cell phone if you know your call is going exceed the appropriate length of time for a business call.
Computer Monitoring
If you have a computer terminal at your job, it may be your employer’s window into your workspace. There are several types of computer monitoring.
- Employers can use computer software that enables them to see what is on the screen or stored in the employees’ computer terminals and hard disks. Employers can monitor Internet usage such as web-surfing and electronic mail.People involved in intensive word-processing and data entry jobs may be subject to keystroke monitoring. Such systems tells the manager how many keystrokes per hour each employee is performing. It also may inform employees if they are above or below the standard number of keystrokes expected. Keystroke monitoring has been linked with health problems including stress disabilities and physical problems like carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Another computer monitoring technique allows employers to keep track of the amount of time an employee spends away from the computer or idle time at the terminal.
Is my employer allowed to see what is on my terminal while I am working?
Generally, yes. Since the employer owns the computer network and the terminals, he or she is free to use them to monitor employees. Employees are given some protection from computer and other forms of electronic monitoring under certain circumstances. Union contracts, for example, may limit the employer’s right to monitor. Also, public sector employees may have some minimal rights under the United States Constitution, in particular the Fourth Amendment which safeguards against unreasonable search and seizure.
Electronic Mail
In most cases, no. If an electronic mail (e-mail) system is used at a company, the employer owns it and is allowed to review its contents. Messages sent within the company as well as those that are sent from your terminal to another company or from another company to you can be subject to monitoring by your employer. This includes web-based email accounts such as Yahoo and Hotmail as well as instant messages. In general, employees should not assume that these activities are not being monitored and are private
When I delete messages from my terminal, are they still in the system?
Yes. Electronic and voice mail systems retain messages in memory even after they have been deleted. Although it appears they are erased, they are often permanently “backed up” on magnetic tape, along with other important data from the computer system.
Is there ever a circumstance in which my messages are private?
Some employers use encryption to protect the privacy of their employees’ electronic mail. Encryption involves scrambling the message at the sender’s terminal, then unscrambling the message at the terminal of the receiver. This ensures the message is read only by the sender and his or her intended recipient. While this system prevents co-workers and industrial “spies” from reading your electronic mail, your employer may still have access to the unscrambled messages.
I have to say that reading this reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984. It feels like we are being watched by ‘Big Brother’.
Protect your Children’s Privacy
The Internet is the ‘playground’ for children and youth these days. But like the real world, aspects of the virtual world can be harmful to children. Like the real world also, you child can be exposed to potential danger if not careful.
Web sites collect significant amounts of personal information from children. By asking children to register with the site, join a kids’ club, enter a contest, or fill out a questionnaire, these sites can compile names, addresses, favorite activities and commercial products. This information then is used to create customer lists, which may be sold to brokers who, in turn, sell them to other businesses.
Parents, teachers and other guardians cannot always be on hand to prevent children and youth from visiting web sites with harmful or objectionable content. Nor can they always be available to discuss with children what they are encountering in the online world.
No easy answers exist to ensure your child has harm-free experiences on the Internet. Likewise, there are no truly effective technology-based solutions. The best way to ensure that your children have positive online experiences is to spend time with them and ask them to show you their activities.
Education them about the dangers of giving away personal information and the importance of safeguarding their personal identity online is one of the best ways to prevent harmful consequences from occurring when they use the Internet.
Here are some of the top tips for protecting children’s privacy on the Internet which I came across in Privacyrights.org.
1. Read the privacy policy statements on the web sites visited by your children. Teach older children to do the same. Look for policies that explain what information is collected, if any, what the web site operator does with it, and how you can choose whether or not the child’s information can be collected.
2. Decide if you are going to give consent. If your child is under age 13, you must decide if you are going to give permission for web sites to collect personal information from them, a requirement of federal law. Be sure to carefully read the privacy policy and terms of service before making this decision.
3. Look for the web seal. Look for a privacy “seal of approval” on the first page, such as that of TRUSTe, www.truste.org. To display the logo, participants must agree to post their privacy policies and submit to audits of their privacy practices. Web seal programs also provide dispute resolution services. TRUSTe displays a seal especially for children under age 13.
4. Establish a contract with your youngster. Encourage your children, especially teens, to take responsibility for their online behavior by establishing a contract with them.
5. Set family rules for online computer use.
· Tell your children never to give out identifying information such as family information, home address, school name, or phone number in chat room discussions and when visiting web sites. They shouldn’t even reveal such data in private e-mail unless they know whom they are dealing with. They must also not send out personal or family photos without your permission. It’s best for children to use “screen names” that are different from their own in chat rooms.
- Explain to children that passwords must never be given to anyone, even someone claiming to be from the online service.
- Warn your children not to respond to messages that are threatening, suggestive, demeaning, or otherwise make you or the child uncomfortable. Tell them to report such messages to you.
- Set reasonable usage rules, including time limits, for your child’s use of the computer. Watch for excessive use of online services late at night. That could be a tip-off there is a problem.
- Try to make online use a family activity. Keep the computer in a family room rather than the child’s bedroom.
- Get to know your children’s online “friends,” much as you try to get to know their other friends. Never permit a child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with another computer user without you attending at least the first meeting.
- Explain that people online may not be who they seem to be. Someone claiming to be a 12-year old girl might actually a 40-year old man.
- Also explain that not everything they read online may be true. Any offer that’s “too good to be true” probably is.
- Learn about the online services your child uses, including social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. Find out about ways to steer kids to child-friendly sites. If you are a novice to online use, ask your child to show you what they do online and how to log on to online services. Better yet, take a class and learn to navigate the Internet yourself.
What are the privacy implications of children visiting commercial web sites?
Children are a highly marketed segment of the consumer population. Advertisers and marketers can use the Internet to target children and gather personal information from them for marketing purposes. They do this because children are more easily persuaded into buying what they like without thinking too much ahead.
When children visit commercial web sites, they might be tempted to fill out surveys, exchange personal information for gifts, register for club memberships, sign up to receive games, and give up personal information in chat rooms. After learning a child’s name and favorite fictional hero, a company might send the child an e-mail message pretending to be from that “person.” Younger children are not likely to realize the difference between fiction and reality.
Web sites can also be designed to invisibly gather information about children’s interests as the child “travels” from page to page, or site to site. Such transactional data is called the “clickstream.” It often triggers the placement of “cookies” or “web bugs” on the computer used by the child, which in turn enable targeted ads to be displayed.
In short, the interactive world of cyberspace is a highly seductive and potentially manipulative environment for children. Many opportunities exist for gathering data from children and sending them targeted messages. Therefore, parents should equip themselves with the proper knowledge with regards to protecting both their privacy and their children’s privacy online.
I advocate this because I believe that prevention is always better than cure.
Why you should take steps to protect your online privacy
Bringing up the topic of online privacy, it was a coincidence that I had a personal experience. Here is an excellent example of how your information like your email address could place you in a undesirable position.:
elisabethdebede@hotmail.com says:
Hi
M says:
do i know u?
elisabethdebede@hotmail.com says:
hey, A/S/L?
M Kuen says:
erm how did u find me?
elisabethdebede@hotmail.com says:
hey whats up babe, U got a webcam? finally someone adds me, I am soo fuckin horny today for some reason lol
M say:
goodbye
Thinking it might be a long lost friend, I added this person to my chat list and I asked if I knew ‘her’. Firstly, it turned out to be some stranger I did not know PLUS it was a guy (I am pretty sure it is judging from what it’s said above) posing as a girl.
That’s how you’d hear horror stories of some girl or guy getting killed after meeting a stranger via the internet or a young child being sexuality exploited by someone he or she met in a chat room.
The example above is a pretty good enough reason to start taking steps to protect your privacy, don’t you think?
Is your company prepared to handle a reputation crisis?
Continuing my research on reputation management, I came across some interesting stats from Paul Dunnay’s report : “Reputation Management for New Media Survey” on Andy Beal’s marketing pilgrim site. Take a look at the stats below.
- 53% of companies are making reputation monitoring a strategic priority in 2008.
- Yet, only 42% have any kind of online reputation plan in place, and
- 55% of those polled say they are not adequately prepared to handle a reputation crisis.
- 63% of companies do not have a formal policy in place regarding employee blogs.
I would be VERY worried if I owned a company
The importance of protecting your Personal Privacy
If you not convinced about the dangers of not managing your personal info and overlooking your personal privacy, be it in real life or in the virtual world, let these examples below give you an idea of the potential dangers:
- 20-year-old Nashua, N.H. woman named Amy Boyer who was stalked with help from the Internet and then murdered Oct. 15, 1999. The killer, who committed suicide immediately, had purchased Boyer’s social security number for $45 from an online information firm.
- A hacker posted tens of thousands of credit card numbers stolen from CD Universe on a Web site; he offered to share more for $1 apiece
- An investigation conducted by MSNBC revealed dozens of Internet Relay Chat rooms where stolen personal profiles - names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers - are bought, sold and traded out in the open.
- Privacy advocate and well-known spam fighter Ian Oxman was surprised earlier this year how easily he was able to track down the former owner of a used car he had just purchased. Oxman discovered some concealed damage to the car and wanted to learn if it had been in an accident. Armed with the car’s Vehicle Identification Number, he was able to look up the original title owner through an online database on the state of Illinois’ Web site.
- RealNetworks, maker of popular video software, was twice accused of surreptitiously telling its programs to “phone home” and tattle on users surfing habits to the firm. Mattel Interactive had to admit it embedded phone home software called “Broadcast” in its Reader Rabbit software. Surf Monkey, which prevents children from accessing inappropriate sites, also transmits data like user IP addresses back to its maker.
- DoubleClick Inc., an advertising network which tracks users anonymously as they move around the Internet, is really the lightning rod for such criticism. It was sued earlier this year after it revealed plans to match a real-world mass mailing marketing list with its anonymous database of Internet users, which would have revealed the Web users’ identities.
- The Federal Trade Commission sued now-bankrupt Toysmart.com after it planned to liquidate its customer database to the highest bidder.
I hope the examples and stories above gives you an idea of how important it is to manage your identity and reputation both in real life or online. Confidential information like your Social Security Number, Driver’s License, Credit card numbers, and even your birth date should be given with the highest level of discretion. You never know where it will go once you give it away.
I’d like to end with a quote below which I find personally true:
“A lot of people think about privacy but don’t really care until something happens to them personally,” said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. “It’s like freedom. You don’t appreciate it until it’s gone. If you are a victim of identity theft, you experience a change of world view, you realize how little control you have over your world.”
Protect your Privacy!
Source: MSNBC .com
Managing your reputation online: Your Job Might Depend on it
I decided not to break down the research findings from PEW Internet and American Life Project I found into two segments so it will not cause a brain overload when you read it (it did for me….). This is the other reason why you should manage your online identity and reputation.
While most Americans do not actively manage their online presence, there is a segment of internet users who have jobs that require them to market their name on the internet or make information about themselves available online. As one might expect, those motivated by work-related expectations are much more likely to use a search engine to track their digital footprints.
Those with the highest education levels report a greater tendency towards managing their professional presence online.
Fully 18% of working college graduates report that their employer expects some form of self-marketing online as part of their job, compared with just 5% of working adults who have a high school diploma.
Employees who are required to market themselves online are far more likely to monitor their presence with a search engine. Fully 68% of these “public personae” use a search engine to look up their own name, compared with just 48% of employed internet users who are not required to market themselves online as part of their job.
One in five working American adults (20%) says their employer has a special policy about how employees present themselves online—including what can be shared and posted on blogs and other websites.
YOUR JOB DEPENDS ON IT
Managing Online Identity: A Cause for Concern
I was doing some research online about managing online identity and I came across this research done by PEW Internet & American Life Project. Here is what they found:
The majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online. Just 38% say they have taken steps to limit the amount of online information that is available about them.
Online adults can be divided into four categories based on their level of concern about their online information and whether or not they take steps to limit their online footprint:
Confident Creatives are the smallest of the four groups, comprising 17% of online adults. They say they do not worry about the availability of their online data, and actively upload content, but still take steps to limit their personal information. Young adults are most likely to fall into this group.
The Concerned and Careful fret about the personal information available about them online and take steps to proactively limit their own online data. One in five online adults (21%) fall into this category.
Despite being anxious about how much information is available about them, members of the Worried by the Wayside group do not actively limit their online information. This group contains 18% of online adults.
The Unfazed and Inactive group is the largest of the four groups—43% of online adults fall into this category. They neither worry about their personal information nor take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found out about them online.
This is a cause for concern
Your Reputation is EVERYTHING
Your image is EVERYTHING, your reputation is EVERYTHING.
I cannot tell you how important it is these days to safeguard your image and reputation, be it offline or online. The downside to having a negative image or reputation online is that rumors, bad comments or reviews, and negative information spreads through the virtual world like a wildfire. To ‘tame’ it one needs time to clean up the mess others have made.
I know that by giving you an example, it would help you better understand how important this issue can be and how it can affect you as an individual or a company in the long run.
Below is an article posted in Washington Post regarding to the issue of Reputation Management:
Calling in Pros to Refine your Google Image
Here are some insights I personally gained when reading this informative article:
- Negative comments or news can tarnish your reputation as an individual or a company in the virtual world. It can affect your personal life and your credibility as an individual or a company.
- Your business, career or company will be affected: potential clients and employers turn to the web as a source of information. What they read about you or your company will affect their decision in coming to you for business or hiring you as an employee. Thus any negative information will paint a negative picture. Credibility is at stake.
- A second chance to start again (with a relatively clean slate) should be given to those who were not given a fair chance to defend themselves and their reputation online.
Here is a quote taken from the article that I’d like to share with you:
The goal is to get Google and other search engines to seize on relevant sites that contain positive info on their clients and downplay the rest
This is exactly what Reputation BodyGuard aims to do for you. We know we cannot take away every bad review, comment, or information posted by other people online. What we can do is to suppress the negative aspect of you or your company and give your side of the story. Our goal is to give you or your company an image makeover to a point where trust and credibility is gained once more.
With these two important aspects, Reputation BodyGuard is confident that this will create a positive chain reaction. We are passionate about helping you get your reputation back.
- Your reputation is Everything
Trust Reputation BodyGuard to protect you
Reputation BodyGuard: Why you need us.
Let me start off with an analogy.
Remember the good ol days in high school where your reputations IS YOUR LIFE?
Yes, your life literally (well okie, metaphorically) depended on it. How popular or un-popular you are depended on what others say about you. The Jocks, the Nerds, the Cheerleaders, the Band Geeks, the Losers the Prom King, the Prom Queen…..whatever your reputation was, your experience was in the hands of other students.
I’m pretty sure you can relate to what I am talking about. Most, if not all of us have been through this stage. Therefore, you would have an idea of how important your reputation is.
Hence, I’d like to introduce you to Reputation BodyGuard: Specialist in protecting your online reputation.
It doesn’t matter if you are an individual or a company…managing your online reputation is vital to your survival in the virtual world. As individuals, your reputation, business or career prospects could be jeopardized. As a business or a company, you could loose your credibility which would start off a chain reaction ending with a lost in money/profits/clients.
To give you a general idea of what Reputation Management is about, here’s a general definition quoted from Wikipedia:
Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop.
This is why you need us
Reputation BodyGuard understands that it takes time (quite a lot of time actually) and a certain amount of skills (for example, Search Engine Optimization) to manage your online reputation to where it would benefit you as an individual or a company. We also understand the consequences of negative comments, reviews, publicity or false information by those who seek to tarnish your reputation. Let us help you to manage your online reputation. We have the time and skills to safeguard your reputation.
Detailed information of how Reputation BodyGuard will help you manage your internet reputation will be discussed in the coming posts.
I hope you have an idea of what Reputation BodyGuard is about and what we can do for you. We are passionate about what we do and we promise you that our services will be two levels above the competition.
In a nutshell, let Reputation BodyGuard will be your bodyguard in the virtual world! 