Over the next few weeks, Facebook Timeline becomes mandatory for everyone. Yes, that means you who been holding onto your old profile while standing very still in a dark digital corner hoping that Facebook might not notice you among its 800 million users. This will require a little privacy housekeeping thanks to Facebook’s surfacing old posts and photos you had forgotten about. Whether you’ve already switched to Timeline or will be ushered in against your will soon, there’s one very important button for those who want to optimize their privacy after the switch: The entire Forbes article can be viewed here
Your organization’s social media problem can’t be cured with antibiotics
You can’t control what employees do away from work on their own time and using their own equipment but companies do have a right to control their brand and that includes how they are represented by their employees on social media sites. For that reason, every organization should develop, implement and enforce a corporate-wide social media policy for all employees (because if you don’t enforce it, then do you really have a policy?).
Gary MacFadden was kind enough to pose a great question in response to my last blog posting titled “Did you hear the one about the Attorney who thought social media was a dating website for singles over 40?”. Gary pointed out that it would be helpful if I could give examples of a corporate social media policy (what it involved) and what the employee education process would be to make employees aware of the policy. With that in mind, here are some aspects of a corporate social media policy:
- A policy author with contact information in case employees have questions
- An effective date
- A definition of what social media is
- A description as to why this policy is being developed (for legal defense, brand protection etc)
- A description of what social media sites the company officially participates in
- A listing of those employees approved to participate on those sites
- The fact that any and all approved social media participations will be done only from corporate infrastructure (this is to protect approved employees from discovery of their personal computers)
- A description of topics approved to be used
- A description of those topics not approved to be used
- A description of any approval authority process
- A description of what will happen to the employee if they don’t follow the approved process
- A direct statement that unapproved employees that make derogatory remarks about the organization, publish identifying information about clients, employees, or organization financials, talk about organization business or strategy etc. in any social media venue will be punished in the following manner…
- A description of how these policies will be audited and enforced
Once the policy is developed, it needs to be communicated to all employees and updated by legal representative on an annual basis. This education process could include steps like:
- A regularly updated company intranet site explaining the policy.
- A description and discussion of the policy in new employee orientation activities.
- A printed description of the policy which the employee signs and returns to the organization.
- An annual revisiting of the policy in department meetings.
- The publishing of an organization “hot line” to your corporate legal department for real-time questions.
On a related topic, for legal reasons you should be archiving all approved social media participations much like many companies now archive their email and instant message content.
This practice will seem rather draconian to many employees but in reality the organization needs to protect the brand and always have a proactive strategy for potential litigation.
A sampling of various organizations social media policies can be found here. I was particularly impressed withDell’s.
Frictionless eDiscovery; social media addicts beware…
eDiscovery just got a lot easier…for opposing counsel.
Facebook’s new system to auto-share what you do around the web may catch many Facebook enthusiasts off guard. Even “power” users of Facebook will probably run into trouble with this “frictionless sharing” feature. Once it’s enabled on a site you won’t get any other warnings that you “tracks” are being broadcast to large numbers of people. In fact, even those people who know exactly how this new feature works will need to be on guard against sharing some seriously embarrassing and or compromising updates.
For those not in the know, Facebook is making sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on a growing community of Facebook-connected apps.
Huh? It could be the news articles you read online, the videos you watch, the photos you view, the music you listen to, or any other action within the site or app. In the future it could be the “stuff “you buy on-line or the profiles of people you view, or diseases you looked or the fact that you searched for information on the term “formaldehyde” on a specific day…
To be fair, currently, you must explicitly authorize a site or app to share your information with Facebook. How this sharing mechanism works depends on the app. Authorizing the Washington Post or The Guardian Facebook apps allows you to read those news sites right within Facebook. The downside, however, is that everything you read is shared back to your friends via a timeline… This capability may also effect those news organizations which have jumped into this partnership opportunity. These news organizations may see a drop in views because potential readers will now have to first consider how viewing a particular story will affect their reputation; Do I really want to click on this story knowing my “friends” will know I viewed this?
A timeline… REALLY! Do your friends really need to know you viewed a website titled “BieberFever.Com” at 1:13 am last Thursday morning? Or that you read an article on setting up a Swiss bank account 57 minutes after you received notice of a pending lawsuit? Talk about making the opposing counsel’s job easier…every discovery request will automatically include Facebook accounts.
Another group that needs to be careful are employees. I can imagine an HR representative viewing an employee’s Facebook page to verify, via the employee’s timeline, they have been surfing the web for the last 17 days.
I have repeatedly warned friends that social media sites like Facebook are potentially dangerous in that what you (or an application) post to your social media site could be used against you by potential employers, current employers or attorneys. One question I suggest all social media addicts ask themselves before they post is; “Is this something I would feel comfortable showing up on the front page of the New York Times?”…Because someday it could.
EPIC Asks FTC to Investigate Facebook’s “Timeline”
Last year I wrote two blogs titled Spoliation of the Facebook Timeline and Frictionless eDiscovery; social media addicts beware…
which discussed the potential privacy problems with the new Facebook Timeline feature. Yesterday the blog site: The ESI Ninja Blog posted a blog about further developments around privacy and the Timeline feature. The below content is from that blog:
EPIC Asks FTC to Investigate Facebook’s “Timeline”
Posted on January 10, 2012 at 6:44 pm by John M. Horan
When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Facebook’s new Timeline feature at the company’s Sept. 22, 2011 f8 developer conference, he described it as “The story of your life . . . . All the stuff from your life.” According to a Sept. 22, 2011 Facebook Blog post,
The way your profile works today, 99% of the stories you share vanish. The only way to find the posts that matter is to click “Older Posts” at the bottom of the page. Again. And again.
. . .
With timeline [sic], now you have a home for all the great stories you’ve already shared. They don’t just vanish as you add new stuff.
The Timeline announcement came toward the end of an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into Facebook’s privacy practices, culminating in the Commission’s Nov. 29, 2011 announcement that Facebook had agreed to settle FTC charges “that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.” In general outline, the FTC said, the proposed settlement
bars Facebook from making any further deceptive privacy claims, requires that the company get consumers’ approval before it changes the way it shares their data, and requires that it obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years.
Three days before the Dec. 30, 2011 close of the 30-day comment period on the proposed settlement, privacy rights organization Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) urged the FTC to investigate whether Facebook’s new Timeline feature complies with the terms of the proposed settlement. Echoing some of the concerns it raised in a Sept. 29, 2011 letter to the FTC regarding “frictionless sharing,” EPIC’s Dec. 27, 2011 letter to the FTC asked the Commission to: <the rest of the blog entry can be viewed here>
Who owns an employee’s social media account?
The New York Times published a story on December 25th of this year titled: “A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court” raising questions around the ownership of a Twitter account that was opened by an individual who included the name of the company he was working for in his account name and posted to the Twitter account during business hours. The NYTimes story posed the question: Can a company cash in on and claim ownership of an employee’s social media account, and if so, what does that mean for workers who are increasingly posting to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus during work hours?
The story revolves around a lawsuit filed in July of 2011 by the company Phonedog.com. The defendant, Mr. Kravitz, a writer, began posting to his Twitter account under the name “Phonedog_Noah” and over time collected 17,000 followers. In October 2010, Mr. Kravitz quit his job at Phonedog.com telling him that he could keep his Twitter account in exchange for tweeting on their behalf occasionally and Mr. Kravitz agreed.
Mr. Kravitz changed the name of the account to “NoahKravitz” keeping all the followers to the original account and began posting.
The question the New York Times posed is an interesting one but I think another question that should be asked is; what should an employee do to ensure there is no legal claim by their employer to “their” social media presence?
First, the employee should inquire within their employer as to any social media policies that exist. Most of the employer social media policies I have seen go to great pains describing what employees can and can’t post about the company and its business to social media sites. Corporate content such as upcoming product releases, sales data, and company rumors are the most popular types of restricted content highlighted. Based on this case, additional policy elements should include not including the organization’s name in the employee’s social media handle as well as not accessing or interacting with the employee’s social media accounts during work hours and from infrastructure owned by the organization.
If the organization doesn’t have a published social media use policy, then the employee should follow common sense and:
- Not post about your employers business especially confidential content
- Not post organization or staff rumors
- Never include the organization’s name in the social media handle (remember, corporate brands are valuable and most companies will aggressively defend them
- And never access social media accounts while on “company time” and from company infrastructure
Like the case mention above, if the organization asks its employees to post comments about the organization, employees should get the request in writing first acknowledging the organization will not claim ownership of the employee’s social media account is the employee does what is requested and also describing the types of comments the organization would like the employee to post. The employee will then have to decide if they want to use their social media account for organization business.
The same holds true for creating a social media account which includes the organization’s name as in the case mentioned above: Phonedog_Noah. In many cases creating a social media account with the employers name may be considered part of the employment agreement and could be considered an organization’s asset. The employee should always ask if that is the case and if the employer doesn’t claim ownership at the start, the employee should get a statement in writing stating the employer has no claims on the social media account.
A social media presence has become an integral part of organization marketing and all parties involved need to understand up front what the expectations are and who owns the asset.
Spoliation of the Facebook Timeline
In a previous posting, I described the new feature in Facebook called “frictionless sharing”, a Facebook feature that will make sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on a growing community of Facebook-connected apps. Potentially everything you do on the web could be shared on a timeline with your “friends” and any others (like attorneys) that get access to your page based, for example, on a Judge’s order for discoverable information.
The USA Today Tech section published an article titled “Facebook Timeline a new privacy test” a couple of days ago that got me thinking. From the USA Today article:
Up until now, Facebook accounts have focused on the most recent posts. With the new profile format, the most recent Facebook activities will be at the top. But as users go back in time, Timeline will summarize past posts — emphasizing the photos and status updates with the most “likes” or comments.
“A lot of people just don’t realize how much information they’ve shared in the past.”
This new timeline feature that takes much of what you have done on the internet and neatly organizes it into a timeline is a perfect target for eDiscovery. This brings up two questions; can you edit or hide items on your timeline and can you permanently delete data from your Facebook timeline? These two questions also highlight another question…if you edit your Facebook account and or remove something from your timeline, could that be considered spoliation in a legal proceeding?
Before I address the spoliation issue, let me address the first two questions.
1. Can you edit or hide items on your timeline? The answer is yes you can. From the Facebook help center:
How do I remove a story from my timeline?
You get to decide which stories appear on your timeline. Hover over a story on your timeline to see your options:
- (Feature on Timeline): This allows you to highlight the stories you think are important. When you star a story, the story expands to widescreen. Starred stories are also always visible on your timeline.
- (Edit): This gives you the option to:
- Hide from Timeline: This removes stories from your timeline. Note that these stories will still show up in your activity log, which only you can see. They also may appear in your friend’s News Feeds.
Depending on the type of story (ex: status update, check-in, tagged photo), you may also have the option to:
-
- Change the date of a story (ex: for an old photo, you can enter the date the photo was taken so it shows up in the right place on your timeline)
- Delete a post (that you posted)
- Report a post or mark it as spam (that someone else posted)
You’ll notice there isn’t a “delete” capability in the edit function.
2. Can you permanently delete timeline data from your Facebook account? As far as I can tell you can. In Facebook there is a feature called the “activity log” that is a record of all of your activity on Facebook. From the Facebook help center:
The activity log is a record of all of your activity on Facebook. So if you hide a story from your timeline, this story will still appear in your activity log. Your activity log is only visible to you. However, all of the stories in your activity log are eligible to appear on your timeline (unless you hide them from your timeline) or in your friend’s News Feeds.
The stories in your activity log are organized by the date they happened on Facebook. You can access your activity log by clicking the View Activity button on your timeline.
From the activity log you can:
- Scroll through a history of all of your activity on Facebook
- View and approve your pending posts
- Filter the type of activity you see (ex: see all of your status updates or all of the links you’ve shared)
- Choose which stories are featured on your timeline
- You can also click the button to the right of each story. Depending on the story type (ex: status update, photo, app story), you may have the option to:
- See the audience you shared
- Delete posts
- Report a post or mark it as spam
- Change the date of a story
- Remove an app from your account
So you can potentially delete items from your timeline… So this brings up my question on spoliation of the Facebook timeline; what, if anything, do organizations have to do to safeguard against altering the organization’s or employees personal Facebook timelines if pending litigation is foreseeable?
Obviously the Facebook timeline is potentially discoverable depending on the circumstances of the case. Organizations need to include the Facebook timeline in their litigation hold/eDiscovery process and to inform impacted employees of their responsibilities to protect potentially responsive information from within all of their personal accounts that could hold relevant ESI including the Facebook timeline data.
As a side note, it’s always a good practice to regularly remind employees not to mix business ESI with their personal accounts.
Frictionless eDiscovery; social media addicts beware…
eDiscovery just got a lot easier…for opposing counsel.
Facebook’s new system to auto-share what you do around the web may catch many Facebook enthusiasts off guard. Even “power” users of Facebook will probably run into trouble with this “frictionless sharing” feature. Once it’s enabled on a site you won’t get any other warnings that you “tracks” are being broadcast to large numbers of people. In fact, even those people who know exactly how this new feature works will need to be on guard against sharing some seriously embarrassing and or compromising updates.
For those not in the know, Facebook is making sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on a growing community of Facebook-connected apps.
Huh? It could be the news articles you read online, the videos you watch, the photos you view, the music you listen to, or any other action within the site or app. In the future it could be the “stuff “you buy on-line or the profiles of people you view, or diseases you looked or the fact that you searched for information on the term “formaldehyde” on a specific day…
To be fair, currently, you must explicitly authorize a site or app to share your information with Facebook. How this sharing mechanism works depends on the app. Authorizing the Washington Post or The Guardian Facebook apps allows you to read those news sites right within Facebook. The downside, however, is that everything you read is shared back to your friends via a timeline… This capability may also effect those news organizations which have jumped into this partnership opportunity. These news organizations may see a drop in views because potential readers will now have to first consider how viewing a particular story will affect their reputation; Do I really want to click on this story knowing my “friends” will know I viewed this?
A timeline… REALLY! Do your friends really need to know you viewed a website titled “BieberFever.Com” at 1:13 am last Thursday morning? Or that you read an article on setting up a Swiss bank account 57 minutes after you received notice of a pending lawsuit? Talk about making the opposing counsel’s job easier…every discovery request will automatically include Facebook accounts.
Another group that needs to be careful are employees. I can imagine an HR representative viewing an employee’s Facebook page to verify, via the employee’s timeline, they have been surfing the web for the last 17 days.
I have repeatedly warned friends that social media sites like Facebook are potentially dangerous in that what you (or an application) post to your social media site could be used against you by potential employers, current employers or attorneys. One question I suggest all social media addicts ask themselves before they post is; “Is this something I would feel comfortable showing up on the front page of the New York Times?”…Because someday it could.
Information Governance-101 