Mashable, the social media guide, posted this unbelievable story July 5th which should be filed under “social networking run amok”. Here’s the scoop:
“There are red faces in the UK today after it emerged that private details about the incoming head of MI6 (the British intelligence agency) were posted to Facebook by his wife. The details included information about John Sawers’ family, residence, vacations…and a photo of Sawers in a Speedo.
Specific details revealed, according to the BBC included the location of the London flat where Sawers lives with his wife, plus the location of their children and John’s parents. The page’s privacy settings were not turned on, meaning that anyone in Facebook’s London network had access. Vacation photos, friendships and other details were also available on Shelley Sawers’ Facebook page, which has since been removed. The story originally broke in the Mail on Sunday. Sawers is currently the UK Ambassador to the United Nations and is due to take up his role as the head of MI6 in November.”
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband played down the issue today, saying on a morning talk show: “You know he wears Speedo…I mean, that’s not a state secret”.
Well, despite frantic efforts by the British government to spin this Facebook farce into a harmless, if personally embarrassing episode for the Sawers, it remains to be seen whether this “spy” will actually head the MI6. Whatever the outcome, certainly his chatty wife should have been briefed on how to avoid becoming such a security liability! If only Lady Sawers had understood how to use privacy settings on Facebook!
Now that Facebook is the # 1 social media site used by 200 million worldwide, many companies have jumped onto the Facebook bandwagon in an effort to embrace social networking. Here are a few industrial companies and organizations whose official and unoffical pages can be found on Facebook:
Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters
CHRISTIE DIGITAL
Hitachi Canadian Industries Ltd.
John Deere
Siemens
MAGNA
Open Text
THYSSEN KRUPP
What is Safe for your Company to Share?
But as Facebook and other social networking sites continue to grow by leaps and bounds, many privacy issues are also cropping up. Most of us end up blending our personal and professional lives on Facebook and that can get a bit uncomfortable.
If your company is considering entering the Facebook world to interact with your employees or customers, here are some privacy tips on how to set up your corporate Facebook page.
Use your Friends, Family and Professional lists — everyone doesn’t have to see everything. Perhaps you only want co-workers or employees to view some portions of the information on your Facebook page and give public access to the rest. You can create a Professional List which restricts access to these groups.
- You can add each friend to more than one friend group
- Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
- Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
Remove yourself from the Facebook search results — if you only want to be found by people you reach out to — this is an easy fix for eliminating most of the unwanted friend invites.
Remove yourself from the Google search — Facebook listing seem to grab great Google juice. So if you want your corporate Facebook page to be found, leave it be. But if you’d prefer more privacy, you can remove yourself from the listings. Most companies will want Google exposure.
The dreaded photo/video tag — this one has cost people jobs, relationships and their own dignity. With a simple change in privacy settings, you can make it so that no one (or just those you choose) can see those tell all photos and videos. Employees who blithely grant their co-workers access to their personal Facebook pages run the risk of being over-exposed if they neglect to tweak their privacy settings.
Not everyone needs to see every picture — this holds true of your corporate photo albums as well. You can set privacy settings for each one separately. Perhaps you want the staff Christmas party pictures available to all members of the public – if not, restrict them to your Professional List.
Censor your friends…keep their thoughts off your wall! — I think this is one of the most critical on the list. You can control who sees your Facebook wall and who can write on it. If this is an official corporate page, the administrator can set up a closed group and approve every employee or person who wishes to join your Facebook page as a fan. An open access corporate page which anyone can join, however, does provide a more interesting forum for information sharing by employees and customers.
Bottom line: Do set your privacy settings before jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. Offering unfiltered online dialogue might be a scary a leap of faith for some companies, but if your customers are engaged in social networking, can your company afford NOT to be there as well?
For a full discussion on these and other privacy settings on Facebook including how to implement them, I recommend reading this post by Nick O’Neill on All Facebook: The Unofficial Facebook Resource.
If your company has got a Facebook page, please share your experiences on how well Facebook works for you as a communications and branding tool.
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