The line between work and play is becoming increasingly blurred. So it's a good idea to be careful about the personal information you allow to go online.
By Michael Axelsen
It's about who knows you
It's the year 2020, and your legs are stretched out under that desk and a coffee is in your hand. You are successful. You did well at university, qualified as a CPA and deal with challenging, business-related issues every day. Your work is interesting, and you love working with clients. Of course, you did have to take your mother's maiden name after that unfortunate incident in 2010, but life is good.
The telephone rings. Your boss wants you to meet a prospective client. You enter the room and shake the hand of the client, who vigorously pumps your hand. The vigorous pumping suddenly freezes. You know what's coming. So does your boss, who glares at you darkly. The client laughs and bursts out, 'Hey. I remember you. Aren't you the one in that video with the llama? You know, the Llama Loser? Nice tattoo by the way.'
Your heart sinks, it has happened again. It is difficult to give clients serious business advice when that image keeps playing over in their head. You feel like screaming, 'Leave me alone!'
It's not a far-fetched scenario. Ask the Star Wars Kid. Ask Gary Brolsma. Ask Melinda Bird and Katrina Nugent, Sydney legal secretaries who were correspondents in a bitchy email exchange that began over a misplaced ham sandwich. Ask Stacey Hedger, performer of perhaps the worst Star Wars trumpet solo ever shared in cyberspace.
These people will live the rest of their lives with the knowledge that, at some time, someone will shake their hand and recognise them, or at least their names, from the internet. They will live with this fear forever. No matter how qualified they become, no matter how many clients and businesses they help, they are forever branded by one silly act that took place many years before.
People do silly things, and have done since the first Stone-Age man ate fermented fruit and woke up in the wrong cave. The difference is that the average Stone-Ager was unlikely to find a video of their antics posted on YouTube, MySpace or Facebook. Today's young (and not so young) professionals must actively monitor their digital life. Information published on the internet is there for a very long time, and may have implications for your personal life and future career.
One wonders, for instance, how Dave, an Australian now living in Korea, gets on with his girlfriend given the very public account in his blog of how heartbroken and destroyed Dave was when his last girlfriend left him in 2003. She is probably not too happy about those photographs, either.
Amateur photographers need to understand that with great power comes great responsibility. Some time ago, the staff at a Brisbane accounting firm were desperately searching for the password to a photo-sharing site. A staff member had published photos from the office Christmas party on Photobucket, and then left on holiday. The subjects of some photos were passionately kissing in a warm and loving embrace. The concern stemmed mostly from the fact that, although the couple were married, they were not married to each other.
A very public digital life means that you are much more easily caught out in a lie. Kevin Colvin of the Anglo-Irish Bank emailed his boss to say he was attending to a 'family emergency'. The lie was revealed when a Facebook friend posted pictures of Colvin dressed as Peter Pan and holding a wand at a Halloween party. In an email, Colvin's boss described the wand as 'cool'. Colvin no longer has a Facebook profile.
Your control over online material is limited. Videos posted to YouTube grant usage rights to others. The video can be used in any way by any user. Retrieving a video posted on YouTube is very difficult. So it may be time to rethink your participation in the 'Vlog Naked' game.
Posting photographs online can also transfer intellectual property displayed in photographs. Texan Alison Chang discovered this in 2007 when a photograph of her taken by her youth counsellor and posted on Flickr was used in a high-profile Australian advertising campaign by Virgin Mobile under the caption 'Dump your pen friend'. The ad also said 'Free text virgin to virgin' at the bottom. Virgin Mobile had not obtained a 'model release' from Chang, whose family sued Virgin Mobile over the campaign, saying it caused the 16-year-old grief and humiliation.
Modern technologies mean that mobile phones and video cameras are everywhere and always ready to film an embarrassing fall down stairs, a 'Miss Teen South Carolina' moment, or your tired and emotional state at a party. This could derail your career in later life.
One Facebook party girl is desperately asking friends to remove photos of her taken while she was drunk. She has resorted to threats of physical violence if the photos are not taken down. To date, her efforts have been unsuccessful.
Of course, it's possible for incorrect and fabricated information to be posted online should you have cruel tech-savvy enemies. Samantha Fletcher, a Brisbane schoolgirl, found a spiteful profile posted on the Dating Psychos website. The profile had been there for nearly a year without her knowledge, and was taken down only after significant media coverage and an internet campaign in the blogosphere.
Your digital footprint looms large. Many employers and recruiters search online for candidates' details. Although this may push ethical boundaries, and Facebook expressly forbids 'commercial use', when material is in the public domain this will continue to be a common practice.
You can reduce the potential impact upon your professional life through judicious use of the internet and the application of common sense. Do not use your work email address for anything other than professional work. In addition to breaching your employer's policy on email, using a work email address makes it difficult to change details and remove material when you change employers.
When using a non-mainstream website, use a third email address that forwards emails to your main personal email account to post comments. Otherwise, your private email address can be used in a Google search to see your online comments. Using an anonymous third email address reduces the chance that your posts will be traced to you by potential employers.
In any case, be sure not to post anything that you would not put on a postcard, and keep private conversations private. A good rule is that you should not write anything you would not show to your mother.
As for photographs and videos, Flickr unto others as you would have them Flickr unto you. Confirm that the subjects of your photos are happy to have their photos online. It may be less spontaneous, but it is the safer approach. Some people do not like candid photographs of themselves pole-dancing or imitating a fascist dictator being made available online.
Take advantage of the privacy options available. Facebook and MySpace have increased the robustness of their privacy options, but the majority of their users still have an open and accessible profile.
If a site has little or no privacy controls, or you do not trust it, be wary of posting information there. Any blog or website that contains your personal material should be restricted to family and friends.
It goes without saying that on social networking sites you should only list as a 'friend' those who are actually friends. There are exceptions, but there should be a specific reason for you to list as a 'friend' someone you have never actually met in person.
You should be particularly wary of posting information that can be used for identity theft. One CPA Australia member has posted a photograph of her degree and CPA Australia correspondence on Flickr. This makes her full name, date of birth, and Hong Kong ID number publicly available. A recent investigation in the UK demonstrated that it was possible to commit fraud with the information contained on some Facebook profiles, and the risk to personal safety is obvious if personal details are made available online. Never post your full date of birth, your full name or your address.
Free online tools such as Google Alerts can be used to email you when content meeting your search terms is posted. These tools email you when new search results are found. You should set up this automated search to look for new instances of your email addresses and common variations on the spelling of your name. Of course, if you have a common name there will be many false positive results, but at least you then have the opportunity to clarify and confirm that you are not the subject of the comment, photo or video.
If you want some entertainment, do the same for your boss and his company. Your boss will be grateful when you alert him to that photograph of him in a tutu mooning his lecturer in 1991.
Finally, just because there are many examples of social networking gone wrong does not mean that it should be avoided altogether. Social networking can help a busy professional maintain a social life. It is also great fun, and gives you the chance to show the world just how interesting accountants can be. Just be careful not to become the Llama Loser, and be sure to keep your private tattoos hidden, for the sake of the children and your career.
Micheal Axelsen is director of Applied Insight, and provides business systems consulting services. He is a CPA (specialist in information technology) and a member of ISACA. He has a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) and Masters of Information Systems. Axelsen's area of expertise is in ICT management and governance, and he is particularly interested in the impact of social networking tools on business. He is chair of the CPA Australia information technology and management centre of excellence, and maintains a website devoted to the management of information and information systems at his blog.
