New Software For Employers To Monitor Facebook 342
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times reports that a new service called Social Sentry has been released to monitor employees' Facebook and Twitter accounts for $2 to $8 per employee. The service also plans to support MySpace, YouTube and LinkedIn by this summer. 'Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a research and advocacy group, called the automatic monitoring of social networking a "disaster," and predicted that it would lead to people being fired for online griping, the airing of political views and other innocuous conversation. There is a tendency to react to an off-color joke or complaint that appears online more harshly than to the same comment made in a cafeteria or company picnic.'"
Easy enough to avoid (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Don't use Facebook on company computers
2. Keep your profile private
3. Don't post work related topics on other user's profiles (they may not be private)
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Yes.
3. Yeah, too bad non-work-related posts may be damaging as well. Your personal, non-work opinions and writings can get you into trouble at work, whether that's fair or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
don't you also have to be going to college to join facebook?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I still think the best solution overall is to just not use Facebook at all
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood the appeal in social networking.
It's the white-listed email system everyone was speculating we'd need when spam got too bad.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Joe NotAnActualSpammer has just planted a fucking tree on his farm!"
As of right now, my main Facebook page has exactly 1 item that I might be interested in....my brother in law posted some pictures he took on spring break. The rest is all kinds of nonsense. And that is with being selective about friend requests. I have 21 "Friends" (still probably too many) and 47 "Friend Requests". I can't imagine how much garbage would be on the page with 68 cabbage planting friends.
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Uhhhhh. Ok, so I'm an idiot. I went plugging through the options one day to try to find a way to not display certain things. I assumed the "Hide" just meant to hide that one post.
But still....My page now looks like "Relative A doesn't like being sick", "Person 1 commented on their own status", "Person 2 likes Person 3's status.", "I just won 1 Swagbuck" (Ok, something new to hide), "Relative B says it is going to be a Marvelous Monday.", ."Person 4 commented on PersonIDon'tKnow's album.", followed by 6 m
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I entirely agree with you.
From a security perspective, social networking appears (to me at least) to have more damage potential then having your identity stolen. You'd still have a job after someone cleaned out your bank accounts, but the stuff that people put on social networking sites will haunt them FOREVER.
FOREVER.
Finally got that 15 minutes of Fame? If so, expect every single thing attributable to you on the web to be instantly scrutinized by everyone with whatever motives, good or bad. The paparazzi-t
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Interesting)
At the risk of having my own "get off my lawn!" moment, I've never understood the appeal in social networking. Trust me, your life is not that interesting.
Yours isn't interesting to me.
But my friends' social life is -- it's often my social life too.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your life is not interesting to me.
However, the lives of my friends and relatives in Arizona, California, South Carolina, Ohio, and New York are interesting to me, and since I live in Minnesota I don't often actually see these people.
I'm not interested in making new friends with Facebook, but I do like keeping track of older ones.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you for appointing yourself the great arbiter of what is and isn't interesting to my relatives and friends. I assume since you think our lives are uninteresting that yours is also bland and boring and yes uninteresting, I'll bet this chewing out is the most interesting thing to happen to you since birth. So until you actually become the arbiter if interest in my life I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself! Oh and by the way Slashdot qualifies as social network
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the way this would work is that they monitor ALL your usage and so you get screwed when you're not at work and are griping.
Nothing to do with being at work and using the services.
Hardly enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's hardly enough. Suppose you're an American who holds Democratic views. Your superiors happen to be hardcore Republicans (the fucking crazy kind).
They're monitoring your social media profiles, and see that you've joined Facebook groups supporting health care reform, joined some groups opposing the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, you've made some comments suggesting you think it's fine for homosexuals to marry and adopt children, and you once twittered a pro-abortion news article link.
Now, they wouldn't have known this about you otherwise. But now they do know. Even if they don't fire you outright, they'll treat you differently, for sure. Maybe they won't trust you. Maybe they won't give you tasks that would allow you to further your career. After all, they probably don't like you any more, just because some political views you expressed differ from theirs.
All that can happen without you using your account at work, without you discussing work-related matters, and even if you keep your profile "private" (which for Facebook these days seems to mean it's open to just about anyone...).
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Simpler solution:
1) Don't work for assholes.....
Re: (Score:2)
The problem here isn't Facebook. It's the farce of "at-will" employment. You're not really free when expressing your political opinions outside of work could cause you to lose your job.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the farce of "at-will" employment. You're not really free when expressing your political opinions outside of work could cause you to lose your job.
So what do you purpose to replace "at-will" employment?
You're not really free when expressing your political opinions outside of work could cause you to lose your job.
So if you found out one of your employees was a member of the KKK, you'd keep him on the payroll?
Re: (Score:2)
BTW, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the worker in this scenario. I have run into one employer once (and not at a job interview fortunately) who expected all employees to have a specific political ideology. If I was seeking a job and such came up, I would be very clear that my political views were my own and that no employer had a right to tell control them.
I have run into subtle pressure. For example, when I worked at Microsoft a lot of my co-workers opposed Maria Cantwell just because she came from
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the founding fathers kept slaves, and thought that was just dandy so yeah, holding the same views as 18th century folks in the 21st century does make you fucking crazy
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because both Democrats and Repblicans are facsists. They're trying to get bigger and control what you're doing.
See, I'm a conservative. I think the role of government should be as little as possible -- provide services that are otherwise impossible, like a military force, roads, water / sewer, police, fire, etc. There isn't a party out there that agrees with my views. I'd like to think that my views are widely held, but as my friend say, "hmm, I seem to be the only one who thinks sandwiches shoul
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Libertarians assume there are no sociopaths -- a faulty assumption made also by democratic philosphies.
The problem is that some people, and some corporations, will act without regard for the safety of others. Thus, a government representing the people must be in force -- and must be a powerful force -- that protects people from harm by the malicious. However, against normal citizens the government should have no power. It's hard to describe exactly as I've only had the general idea for a week or so. Giv
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you should actually learn about our founding fathers views [wikipedia.org] on slavery before you condemn them.
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you even read the article [wikipedia.org] you linked to?
"According to historian Stephen Ambrose: "Jefferson, like all slaveholders and many other white members of American society, regarded Negroes as inferior, childlike, untrustworthy and, of course, as property. Jefferson, the genius of politics, could see no way for African Americans to live in society as free people.""
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't take this to mean that Jefferson was a horrible person, he was heroic in some ways, but in other ways a bigot and a coward. This is OK, and it should give us hope, because all of us have a bad side, all of us have weaknesses, and yet this does not preclude us from being heros in our own way. Everyone has a heroic side, too.
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
How's that a strawman? The GGP said "The exact same views." The GP pointed out a view that the founding fathers had, and pointed out how that exact view is no longer universally acceptable. That immediately destroys credibility, since you can't hold *all* the *exact* same views, unless you're down with slavery.
Further, anyone who thinks the constitution is a dead document, never to be altered or changed is a fucking moron, in my books. The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document. To hold today's world to a piece of paper that was never meant to address the state of current society is narrow-minded and specious at best.
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document.
Once, while I was advocating the government taking a greater role in regulating the Internet (in terms of infrastructure, i.e. Verizon, not in terms of content), a Republican relative of mine complained, "If the founding fathers wanted the federal government regulating the Internet, they would have put it in the Constitution!"
I literally face-palmed on that one. When I reminded him that they didn't really know about the Internet in the early 19th century, he said something like, "Well they didn't say anything about cars or telephones either!" Double face-palm.
Finally I pointed out that the most advanced technology that they would have had at the time was someone carrying a handwritten letter by horseback, and that the Constitution had specifically given the government the power to get involved in those kinds of communications. Essentially, the Constitution gave the government the power to build the most advanced communication and transportation infrastructure available at the time: to hire people to carry letters all over the country and even build a network of roads for them to travel over. He didn't believe me, and asked, "Ok smart guy. If the government was allowed to do that, why didn't they ever do it?" I would have tripple face-palmed if I had three hands.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
See, I know that, but I don't feel that's good enough. Remember my whole "a different world when it was written" bit from a few posts up? Things like the Internet absolutely cannot, nor should be, regulated by individual states, especially with the influence the US has on the Internet in general. But due to the original phrasing of the Constitution, the Feds aren't allowed to say shit about it, technically, unless they try and pull the "crosses state boundaries," which unfortunately opens up all kinds of pr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying (and please correct me if I'm wrong..) that:
1) You would rather not be taxed for a single-payer healthcare system because you don't want to have to pay for other people's medical needs, except horribly-diseased children. You would prefer to pay for your own medical costs and wish everyone else would do the same.
2) "One price for everyone, insured or not" isn't what happens in a single-payer system.
3) Some procedures such as sex changes, boob jobs or granny hips shouldn't be covered in a
Re:Hardly enough. (Score:5, Funny)
WARNING! REPUBLICAN ALERT! REPUBLICAN ALERT! REPUBLICAN ALERT! WARNING!
A WARNING TO ALL MEN: Protect your bumholes! There are Republicans out and about! Do not enter airport washrooms. Do not enter churches. Be on the alert for unprovoked sodomy. Keep your pants on at all times.
A WARNING TO ALL WOMEN: Stay away from coat hangers, especially if pregnant. Hanging up clothes may be mistaken to be an abortion in progress.
A WARNING TO ALL CHILDREN: Keep all science and math textbooks hidden, especially science texts that delve into evolution. Wrapping such books in a fake Bible cover is recommended.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, if only there was a "+1, Flamebait that made me giggle" option...
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:5, Funny)
4) Have two names, one for work and one for home.
(I learned this the hard way, since people called Archimedius Thrublepants-Kopovski aren't exactly common).
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap, that's your name, TOO?
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Thankfully I made a typo. It should be Thrumblepants.
Big fat botties, I've done it again!
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Don't use Facebook
Why did you type all that extra text when you had the perfect solution from the beginning?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Don't use Facebook
Why did you type all that extra text when you had the perfect solution from the beginning?
Because if you don't use Facebook, Bob will for you. You know Bob, the weasel who's looking at the same promotion you are? Yeah, that Bob. A profile picture of you from either linkedin or the company website, then add some pictures from Girls Gone Wild, etc. None of the ggw ones have to show you, just show that you hang around with a wild crowd. Then some photos of a KKK meeting, and "fan of Grand Wizard Cletus" for good measure. You might not get fired, but you're not getting promoted.
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:5, Interesting)
Even without someone posting slanderous FB profiles, I have had a large number of HR people ask me in job interviews about my Twitter/FB/MySpace accounts. In the past, when I told them that I didn't have one, I got looked at like I was completely insane. One interview actually got ended when the interviewer told me that I was a fossil and too behind the times to be part of their company because I didn't have accounts.
So I created some dummy accounts. These days, I do use FB because it is a good tool for events, but I don't bother with any other social networking site.
Re:Easy enough to avoid (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether you know it or not, this person did you a favor.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks for getting that off your back.
The airing of political views (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, people in the work place have to keep their mouths shut already about politics without Facebook.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, people in the work place have to keep their mouths shut already about politics without Facebook.
Maybe so (depending on where you work and what type of assholes you work for), but you can speak openly about your opinions at home or in a public place (even if your coworkers are there). The problem here is that it doesn't matter where you are when you post your rants, there's a possibility that your employer has subscribed to some service that will trawl the internets for your posts, similar to a pre-employment google search (which the last time we discussed it on /. we all agreed is bad too).
Re: (Score:2)
Good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never used any of those services. Everyone told me I needed to take my tinfoil hat off when I told them that this would eventually happen.
What...no slashdot.org?! I'm outraged... (Score:2, Funny)
and I am outraged (Score:3, Funny)
This seems a little overblown (Score:5, Insightful)
In particular it seems that this service is monitoring publicly available posts and also flagging how many of them happen during work hours. Considering employers are likely within their rights to monitor when their networks are used to make private posts, this doesn't really seem so bad.
It might serve as a wake-up call to people who share too much publicly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering employers are likely within their rights to monitor when their networks are used to make private posts, this doesn't really seem so bad.
Given how many of us own personal laptops, personal smart phones, and have personal wireless data plans, this doesn't really seem so bright either. I am also legally entitled to breaks from work.
I'm actually all in favor of IT locking down and monitoring the corporate network to -protect the corporate network-. However, attempting to monitor or restrict the corp
Re:This seems a little overblown (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'm a software developer, in my early 30's, pretty tech-savy. It took me about 45 minutes (a long time, I think) digging around Facebook's privacy settings to properly hide everything. Not only do you have to go under "Privacy", but also "Application Settings" - would the average user know to do that? Apparently "Group" privacy settings are under applications??? Those settings are complicated And even now I can't hide 1) my friends list from the public 2) my pages from the public. So my point is it's hard to NOT share too much publicly with Facebook.
Re: (Score:2)
And even once you've figured out how to make your Facebookery private (or approximately private), this doesn't address (1) things your friends say or pictures tagged as you, and (2) privacy changes Facebook makes in the future without warning.
I am on Facebook but I take the view that absolutely everything I say might eventually be up for scrutiny. There's lots of rumors flying around about Zoidberg, Facebook's founder, and even if 10% of it is true, I think it is merely a matter of time until Facebook has b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So I'm a software developer, in my early 30's, pretty tech-savy. It took me about 45 minutes (a long time, I think) digging around Facebook's privacy settings to properly hide everything. Not only do you have to go under "Privacy", but also "Application Settings" - would the average user know to do that? Apparently "Group" privacy settings are under applications??? Those settings are complicated And even now I can't hide 1) my friends list from the public 2) my pages from the public. So my point is it's hard to NOT share too much publicly with Facebook.
Aaaaand, that's only private from the general public. Even if you update Facebook only on your own time, with your own equipment, on your own network, there's a chance that your employer can see your full profile anyway... and your mom's profile, and your dog's profile. There have been posts on /. in the past from people who said that a P.I. license and a little money shoved to FB for a special "fraud detection" account will allow HR departments full access to anyone's profile pages and photo albums. I d
Re: (Score:2)
"Trust" - an ancient word meaning whale's vagina apparently.
Re: (Score:2)
In particular it seems that this service is monitoring publicly available posts and also flagging how many of them happen during work hours. Considering employers are likely within their rights to monitor when their networks are used to make private posts, this doesn't really seem so bad
I know! I think the most ridiculous idea is that people are PAYING for this software! You get your IT guys to put some Open Source Linux variant on their routers that keep track of internet usage - and compare it with an IP-Table for those well known sites - and you'll know who is on Facebook when. If your company is larger than 10 people you probably have an "IT Department" and they should know how to handle all of that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well you are posting on slashdot during normal work hours in the US, so there's a good chance you already know the answer to that question.
Most employers i've had have a fairly reasonable policy on that stuff. I'll post when i'm waiting on builds or during my lunch break, or sometimes when i'm just pissed off and need to "walk away" for a bit.
Your public activities outside of work have always been fair game. If I wrote a letter to the local newspaper slamming my employer then I'd fully expect that to come b
Re: (Score:2)
I fully agree. I have a friend who has been an active political blogger for a long time, and is currently running for office. He always posted under his real name with the principle that he would not write anything online that he would say in person or in publish on paper.
Far too many
I can beat that price. (Score:2)
FTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
"Social Sentry draws only on publicly posted information on Facebook and Twitter;"
Talk about a cash cow. Trolling public information that may or may not be your employee is risky (duplicate names). Perhaps this will remind folks that use social networks to set their security settings up is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how that would work, but finding the right person seems tricky.
I'm the #1 hit for my name on google, yet when searching with site:facebook.com i'm not on the first few pages. Even attaching various cities i've lived in doesn't make that any better. I'm not even sure how they'd do that, short of requiring the employer to provide a list of pages to monitor.
Re: (Score:2)
I would like to know (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Hire better people. If you have to be concerned about this you need 1) a good web filter or 2) a new job because you can't manage.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're assembly-line workers, then probably yes. If they fall in the "knowledge" category, then I disagree in principle. To expect a human to mentally function at top efficiency without breaks and diversions is not reasonable. So, if you are the kind of employer who has hourly-wage employees with scheduled breaks, then you have a right to complain if your workers are slacking off on the clock. If no
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
>the time and resources they spend on personal items while getting paid by me is no less than stealing.
On the other hand, you like to steal your employees' time by not paying them overtime?
Reacting harshly? (Score:3)
"There is a tendency to react to an off-color joke or complaint that appears online more harshly than to the same comment made in a cafeteria or company picnic"
Of course, because such as comment isn't a one-off thing in close company, but posted for everyone to see until it is removed -- rather like a sign hung from the break-room bulletin board.
Seriously now... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even better, set your defaults so only a particular group can see what you put on your wall and other things. Then add all your friends (true friends) to that group. This way, if you add someone to friends as a diplomatic move (some workplaces require being added to friends/followers as a condition of employment), by default they do not see your posts. Same with organization fan pages that one joins.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If requested MySpace/Facebook will grant employers with invisible type "friend" status to any of their employee's account. Employers can monitor their employees page without the user giving individual consent (general consent was given when accepting the user agreements) or knowing they have been friended by their employer. This is not a protection by itself. It could be for this particular service as they claim it only covers "public" information but it isn't if the employer asks directly.
Re: (Score:2)
'Learning" Social Networking (Score:5, Insightful)
All of this is to say that it's a very dangerous time to be active on a social networking site. _YOU_ may understand how it all works. Your _FRIENDS_ may understand that you're just venting about a shitty day at work or whatever. Can you be certain your MOM or your BOSS similarly understands these things?...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember back when I was an intern at SGI, there was a big hullabaloo over the "bad attitude" newsgroup -- this was a newsgroup set up with the idea that people who had a forum to bitch about the company would be overall happier workers. In c
read the writing on the wall (Score:2)
Of course, that being SGI around 1999/2000, the people who got canned over BA were just a few months ahead of most of the rest of the company, but you take my meaning.
So the inference we should draw is that any company that squanders effort on such misguided snooping is mere months away from going down the crapper? Good to know, good to know...
Re: (Score:2)
In SGI's case, I'd say it's more like "Any company that realizes they can't sell $10k IRIX workstations anymore and decides to base their new business strategy on the moronic idea that they can sell $10k WinNT workstations instead is mere months from going down the crapper".
Any company over a certain size will contain the useless sorts of twits who have nothing better to do then spend their time concentrating on what employees are posting on the internet -- it's a function of CYA mixed with boredom, stupidi
Re: (Score:2)
You have a skewed idea of how things are "supposed" to work. In _your_ mind, it may be supposed to work one way. But the whole idea of "social networking" is that it is PUBLIC. It is supposed to work however each user uses it. This also includes REPEATING what is read on one site on other sites.
I'm sorry if it doesn't work the way _you_ intended to use it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to have forgotten MySpace.
Lucky bastard!
Perhaps they'll release their customer list (Score:3, Funny)
If we know which companies subscribe to the service, we have new additions to the list of companies to avoid working for.
Smart Employers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smart Employers (Score:4, Insightful)
so only allow friends access, and be selective (Score:2)
you know, just like unix... very user friendly, but particular about its friends.
Corporate citizens (Score:2)
If your profile is public... (Score:2)
If your profile is public you deserve what you get.
If the software includes falsifying information to 'friend' an employee, that should be a violation of Facebook's terms of use.
This is not just happening INSIDE the workplace (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not just happening in the workplace. Some employers are actively watching their employee's social networking pages when they are outside the work environment!
My girlfriend was recently given a series of "guidelines" in which was outlined, procedures for proper social network use. Amongst those outlined, the guidelines state she cannot speak negatively of her employer, and may not even speak of public information such as stock price of the company. It also goes so far as to say she cannot make politically or religiously opinionated posts, and she may not post such content anonymously,
At the end of this document composed of "guidelines" (their term) is a signature and date field, followed by the threat of termination of these guidelines are not followed. Guidelines my ass, it's a contract to limit her free speech outside the work place.
We're at a lost as to what to do. Thus far she's refused to sign the document, and has attempted to contact the ACLU and several other organizations. Nothing yet so far.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't firing someone for a religiously-themed comment run the company into all sorts of problems? Let alone shutting down their expression in that arena. What if you belong to a church that believes in evangelism? You are essentially firing someone for their beliefs, not just expressing them.
What you've described is highly problematic.
Would you really want to fire someone for a political opinion on their own time?
Re:Firing Reason (Score:3, Insightful)
What is to prevent them from merely listing the reason as "inadequate performance" or some other description?
When you have a job, your employer has you by the short and curlies and can more or less dictate whatever the fuck they want - in one way or another - if you want to keep the job. Its not fair or right in any sense, but it is Capitalism in action. Only in cases of outright discrimination, or where the employer has been remarkably stupid, do you end up with any legal recourse if they violated the law.
Re:This is not just happening INSIDE the workplace (Score:5, Interesting)
* Ignore it. If people ask her, tell them, "oh yeah, I'll get right on that." Often in large bureaucracies weird requirements come up, but no one actually cares about them so they go away if you ignore them.
* Incidental to that, don't be emotional. If you passionately object, suddenly people will start to take a personal interest in you, and then it gets harder to ignore. Bureaucratic nonsense is never worth getting emotional about.
* If that doesn't work, and someone comes to you and insists that you do it, give them a task to distract them. Say, "Have you checked with the legal department about it? Can you do so please and tell me what they say?" If you are lucky, it will seem like too much work for them and they will give up.
* If that doesn't work, try amending the contract with a pen. Cross out every part you don't agree to. Or, my preference, add a line that says, "I don't actually agree to this." Write it in cursive and if you are lucky, the corporate drone will decide, "good enough" because in reality, they are just trying to fulfill the stupid requirements someone gave them.
* If that doesn't work, try to talk to a supervisor. Try to escalate it to the person who actually created the policy (since they are the ones who understand the reasoning behind the policy). Once again, don't be emotional, and be respectful. Try to understand their position. You can also try escalating to the person above them.
* If that doesn't work, just refuse. In this case, they can't really fire you, because it's illegal. Once again, try not to be emotional, and be respectful, because otherwise it will be easy for them to make your job annoying in other ways. It's harder if you are respectful.
* It's extreme, but there is always the option to quit.
THAT is how you deal with bureaucracies.
tunnel (Score:2)
Use your laptop at work and an ssh tunnel to your home sever. Then browse the net.
Re: (Score:2)
None of their damn business (Score:2)
1) Why would you use your Real Life name on an Internet social forum?
2) Why in the Nine Hells would you tell your boss your Internet nickname on said social forum??
Re: (Score:2)
Because part of the idea of that social network is so those people you knew 30 years ago can find you.
Monitoring (Score:2)
Hey, can I get this company to hire a private detective to follow my employees around all day? How much would that cost?
I just want to know what they're saying about my company in their off time, and find out whether anyone is sharing sensitive company information. There's no problem with that, right?
Re:Jeebus - just block facebook, it's not that har (Score:4, Insightful)
Communications manager who uses Facebook for the company's Facebook group.
There's a reason for you. One of many in my place of work. Facebook access is blocked for the average drone, but there are a few folks that have reasons to use it for work purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
Allow access, then any employee who posts "my company sucks" to their own company's facebook or twitter page automatically gets fired, not for squaundering $0.000005 of the company's valuable resources, but for being a dumbass.
If you insist on blocking, I should be able to contract out my finely-tuned dumbass-detection skills to you for big bucks. Profit! And zero false positives, for the most part.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't about monitoring people facebooking at work, it's about monitoring facebook profiles around the clock to check up on your employees' personal lives and rants.
Re: (Score:2)
Easy answer: Drunken sales people.
Re: (Score:2)
Works for me. My boss is my FB friend. He doesn't use it much, but I'm happy for anyone in the world to see anything I put anywhere. If I were to get in trouble for something I say online then it would only show that my employer is not someone I would want to continue working for.
And it's happened in the past. I once got blowback on an internal developer discussion list for saying something that should have been completely benign. I said that I very much liked a technology that the company was using, a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
How things *should* work and how they *do* work are often, if not most times, drastically different from each other. This is pretty simple "Life 101" stuff here.