Facebook and its take on privacy settings have been in the news quite a bit lately.  What is the big deal?  Facebook has created a vast maze of settings which is nearly impossible to navigate on your own.  To avoid feeling like Juan Ponce de León searching for the Fountain of Youth, look to the New York Times infographic which details the location of every facebook privacy setting.  According to this graphic, Facebook’s privacy policy, at 5, 830 words, is the longest of any other social networking site and is even 1,300 words longer than the United States Constitution (without amendments).  If the Supreme Court still hasn’t figured the Constitution out, tell me – how are we supposed to decipher privacy on Facebook?

Why is this important?

I won’t argue that facebook isn’t a great resource for keeping up with friends and old acquaintances and for networking but it can also be fraught with danger.  For one thing, while you can choose which pictures to upload to facebook, you have no control over what others post.  Sure, you can “de-tag” yourself from a picture but you have no way to remove the potentially harmful picture.  To make matters worse, many employers now conduct pre-employment google and facebook searches of potential employees which may lead to trouble getting hired.  Kathy Potter, Director of the Career Center at Santa Clara university says that employers are using “online resources to reject applicants, not to make final hiring decisions.”  To make matters worse, it is very difficult to permanently delete something from Facebook.

Do yourself a favor and do your best to regulate what the internet says about you because you never know what sort of information the “open graph” will learn about you.  Your career will thank you.

Boston Employment Lawyer · career · Facebook · Internet · New Hampshire Employment Lawyer · privacy · Worcester Employment Lawyer

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