How Social Networking May Jeopardize Your Promising Career

ARTICLE

Face it, you should never judge a book by its cover. Just about every Web 2.0 application so far released was made to appear to be one thing whose features you should fully embrace, and which you should not go without, never ever again. They are in general user-friendly beyond words, and will make your life so easy that even you can handle it. You never dared dreaming of such pleasure, just come in and find out! Social networking tools probably being the most popular among them all. While these applications might really do you a lot of good, in terms of initiating and maintaining friendships old and new all over the globe, you better not take their every word for granted. One of the better known has already repeatedly been reported for treating their clients' privacy with less than due care.

Making Sure No One's Running Out Of Friends

There was this young fellow who had, after a rally of unsuccessful applications, landed a nice job with a rather big firm. While still on probation, he decided to join this social network (after hours, he insists), as recommended by one of his friends. Only days later, he received a large number of mails of the rather unfriendly kind. People, he had never actually met in person, or intended to ever contact again, bid him stand and explain his business of inviting them to this particular website, or why he had sent this apparently private invitation to their office mail account. One of the strangers was not at all strange to him: she was the CEO of the company he happened to work with. Jill had received an unexpected invitation to this service too: Hey Jill, get over here and join "Fancy Name Of Service", I have published some pictures you might be interested in, the "friendly" invitation read.Quite naturally, Jill was less than amused to learn of photographs she might be interested in, published by someone she hardly had exchanged a couple of words with so far, and who was expected to dedicate his time to work for her. Unfortunately, the young fellow had no idea what had caused the commotion, or how to explain it to his employer. It took them quite some effort to figure out what had actually happened.He had used a feature meant to ease the pain of finding out who of your friends is already part of the network. To spare you the trouble of looking up a name at a time, you are asked to yield access to your email contacts. Their script will take over from there. Not bad an idea, actually, and really convenient, too. Unfortunately, the service's efforts don't stop at this point. After checking your contacts against their own database for matches, they send everyone else an email invitation to the effect described above — just to make sure no one's running out of friends. For some reason, they fail to inform the person who "initiated" their campaign of what they are up to.

A Close Call

Fortunately, our young fellow managed to convince Jill that he had neither meant any harm nor abused company equipment or time, but simply tried to make friends. This story might as well have ended much more seriously. What lesson to learn from this?

Don't Use One Webmail Account For Private And Business Mail

If you have to use disposable mail accounts, make sure you have one for your private mail conversation, and another for official purposes. Still better, use different services for each.

Delete E-Mail Contacts You Are Not About To Use Again

Either delete one-time contacts manually, or configure your e-mail account to prevent such contacts from being stored in your contact directory.

Steer Clear Of Private Activities During Office Hours

If you have to use your office computer for your private communication, get your supervisor's leave first. Refrain from private activities during office hours, if any possible. Your employer is perfectly right to demand your undivided attention, while you are paid for your work. If they are reasonable, and appreciate your efforts in general, they are likely to allow for after-hour use of their equipment (within certain limits).

Don't Employ Features You Don't Fully Comprehend

Some features you may come across are definitely worth a shot — yet not necessarily point blank. In general, you should be suspicious of features the provider fails to fully explain. If there is no comprehensible documentation available to the public (every Internet user, whether they have joined the service or not, that is), ask for advice in writing, prior to subscribing to their service.

Read Their Terms Of Use And Their Privacy Statement

Reading any (on-line or off-line) service's "Terms Of Use" and "Privacy Statement" prior to actually creating an account, is in general very advisable. It may save you a lot of trouble, and perhaps even money. Yet sometimes reading these documents and dutifully agreeing to them will not save you from grief. At the time of writing, invitation policies go almost entirely unmentioned in either document provided by the most famous of social network platforms; the only exception being a clear statement that potential end-users are to steer clear of such methods in order to "protect other people's rights".

Conclusion

Social networks, in general, are important. With our reality becoming increasingly virtual, the use of social network platforms is obvious. Yet we must not forget who's supposed to serve who.

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Published on the Front Page of Fortitude June 18, 2010
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