<p>I am a senior in high school and even I have the common sense not to have incriminating things on my profile. I choose the groups I join wisely, I do not have the bumper sticker application (which can be really funny, but not worth it to me), and I do not have pictures of me drinking or smoking or any overtly sexual things either. For some people, a facebook profile is a mean to justify that they are a fun person that likes to party or joke or drink or have sex. All those things are fine, but unless you are trying to find a date on facebook, your “friends” already know what kind of person you are, why prove it with publicly posting pictures or joining an “I love sex and tequila” group. Show them the pictures in person. Get over yourself and begin to live life in the real world, not the virtual world.</p>
<p>Well, it’s easy when you’re in high school and all your friends are in the same town… I’m about 2000 miles away from where I grew up right now… makes it more difficult to whip out the ol’ photo album.</p>
<p>But why wouldn you tell them the story and then when u see them show them the pics, or email (which is another story). Is it really worth your career potential. I understand, i go to boarding school so I live away from alot of my friends, but I think they will live without immediately seeing any alleged drunken antics.</p>
<p>It shouldn’t make a difference if you only befriend people you actually know on Facebook. Set the profile to “private,” and only post clean photos, etc.</p>
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<p>What a boring page that must be.</p>
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<p>THANK YOU.</p>
<p>This is the thing I’m often annoyed about when adults make their chidings – they don’t realise a blog or a facebook profile is hardly the same as a listing in a public phonebook.</p>
<p>“Finding pictures of any indiscretions is a very deliberate, intentional search. It’s not like people “stumble across” those photos. They seek them out. Sounds a little like internet voyeurism to me.”</p>
<p>Not true at all. I found my older S’s blog, and I was definitely not looking for it. He’d sent me some compliments that some of his music had received, and I was so proud that I Googled to find out where the comments came from. His on-line blog – complete with pictures – came up.</p>
<p>Yes people who aren’t deliberately looking for one’s blogs, damaging pictures, etc. may find them.</p>
<p>Your enemies also may mail copies to people whom you’d rather not see those things. Yes, such things happened. Once a student who was rooming over the summer with one of my husband’s college students mailed my husband printouts of her e-mail correspondence with the other student. The e-mails were of a very personal nature, and were none of my husband’s business.</p>
<p>Anything posted on the Internet can be used against you.</p>
<p>I suppose there are two issues here. </p>
<p>The right to act on the internet with any flair, promiscuity or personality as one wishes, without being penalised for it (as long as one acts reasonably). Maybe I don’t mind the world seeing photos of my partying. Why should I be penalised for it, especially if it’s not forbidden to do so in my contract?</p>
<p>Then there’s having people discover information you didn’t really want revealed in public … because of your foolishness and indiscretion.</p>
<p>You can complain that it is voyeurism all you want. The fact is that people do look for things and it can hurt you. It’s not as though it’s a big secret. Schools, companies, other institutions that are considering your for something YOU want, do surf the web looking for dirt on you. They often tell you right out. So you are foolish if you want something of that nature to post things on the web that can compromise your position. </p>
<p>Even if that teacher who was denied her certificate ends up winning her suit, she has gone through quite an ordeal. This is with a lot of support for her position. At least she knows why she was denied, and can dispute it. Many times you will just be dropped from consideration for something without being told why. It just might be your blog, myspace, or other internet indiscretion. So, yes, you have the right to post whatever you want on the internet. But anyone has the right to seek it and use that information.</p>
<p>VictorWega - Ummm… Not really. I don’t have to be doing a keg stand to make my profile interesting.</p>
<p>These warnings are not just for teachers, as I stated before. It’s for EVERYONE. I know that the emphasis on this thread is about teachers, and I know that students are being told about the dangers of posting questionable behavior on the web. But even parents and other supposedly responsible adults are doing the same thing. I see blogs that parents are posting for the world to see telling everyone about their routines, personal info, feelings, info about family and others, photos, etc, etc. One person posted photos of her home and children in great detail. Not too cool, in my book. You don’t know who is reading that stuff and looking at those pictures. You don’t know who you might be insulting. </p>
<p>There was a story not long ago where some highschool parents posted some pictures of a water polo match or other such water activity. They were horrified to find out that the photos ended up on some gay site. Yes, anything you post can be lifted and used. </p>
<p>I see many of these blogs morphing into private diaries with every thought exposed to the world. I think people forget that total strangers, some of whom may not be so sane or balanced can be reading the stuff, not to mention employers, spouse’s employers, potential employers and any number of people who might be making decisions or judgment on you or a family member. It is not smart to post things that can put you or your loved ones at disadvantage. If you want to blog personal things, blog to your own e-mail. Hold it and then release it a year later after editing it. Things that you don’t care about because of your emotional state may look a heck of a lot different once time has passed and you’ve cooled down.</p>
<p>“The right to act on the internet with any flair, promiscuity or personality as one wishes, without being penalised for it (as long as one acts reasonably). Maybe I don’t mind the world seeing photos of my partying. Why should I be penalised for it, especially if it’s not forbidden to do so in my contract?”</p>
<p>Because people like employers have the right to make whatever decisions they want to within the bounds of the law. If they don’t want employees who post pictures on the Internet showing themselves drinking, the employers can choose not to hire such people, and more than likely the people who aren’t hired will never know why they didn’t get the job. Employers also can decide to layoff first people who have Internet sites that the employers don’t approve of, and more than likely the people who are laid off will have no idea what the real reason was that they lost their jobs.</p>
<p>Fair enough- My comments are fairly facebook specific. Blogs exist in all shapes and sizes, and internet users can find them if they search for them, or text contained therein. Google is a search engine to fine specific phrases anywhere on the internet. Blog text is part of the internet. Facebook pictures are not found by any google search that I’ve seen (“find facebook pictures <em>my name</em>” did not turn up anything). Which may be good for me… I’m a little bit wild by most standards. I will stand by my comment that people will not find offensive Facebook material unless they seek it out explicitly.</p>
<p>My enemies? I’m friends with everyone! Anyone that says otherwise is a dirty liar. 
I just like to argue on the internet.</p>
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<p>That’s largely true, although if someone joins various public networks they might be found by accident. However, even if an employer (school or business) doesn’t go looking, others may: students, colleagues, rivals, competitors, etc. So it’s quite possible that embarrassing material might be discovered and disseminated. That’s a concern to an employer who anticipates that employees will conduct themselves in a way that presents a positive image of the organization even when not at work. Standards will vary widely. An elementary school teacher who turns out to be part-time stripper will likely have a real problem; a few boozy photos from a trip to Cancun probably won’t sink a salesperson’s career. Any admission of illegal behavior, though, is likely to be problematic.</p>
<p>Man, I hate this culture sometimes…Maybe the elementary school teacher that is a part-time stripper need to pay the bills. Whatever the elementary school teacher do in his or her spare time should be no body business as long as it is legal.</p>
<p>I just have to hope that any pictures of me partying will be counterbalanced by pictures of me coaching Special Olympics or helping out with Habitat for Humanity… so in theory, maybe it would make an employer like me better. I don’t have anything on there that I wouldn’t defend, face-to-face. I did get paid during college to keep a blog about life at the school, in part because I ran in most of the academic and social circles and could give a fair representation of each; I used a lot of euphemisms and left the details of certain events up to the imagination to keep the posts entertaining while not violating content rules.</p>
<p>I DO realize that it’s completely legal to snoop around on the internet; however, I’m contending that it’s unethical and immoral. Legality and morality aren’t necessarily correlated.</p>
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<p>I completely agree.</p>
<p>The silly part is that now facebook lets you create custom settings as to who can see what. I’m working as an RA over the summer and already have a restricted list set up for any of my kids who try to facebook friend me—they’ll get partia access, but will be blocked from things I might not want them to see(although at the moment…my facebook is completely clean.)</p>
<p>Even CC is not snoop safe and we are anonymous down here. I don’t use facebook either. And I agree with Son of Opie, all this Internet snooping is unethical.
Last month, I got an CC IM from a reporter saying she wants to talk to me. Because she doing an article about students who brag about colleges who accepted them.
Right this would have seemed normal if not for the fact that I have nothing useful to say bout tht topic, and I recently had a melt down regarding my mom’s problem on CC. So my paranoia kicked in and I thought maybe it was about that so I declined to divulge my info. Anyway it has been some weeks, I checked backed on the reporter’s paper she told me, and there had been no article on student bragging under the reporter’s name. So maybe my paranoia was justified.
I never feel comfortable to let my privacy be invaded :).</p>
<p>First, I want to point out that sometimes a parent finds out about such things not because THEY are snooping, but because their kids are talking about it - “hey, did you see Mr. X’s facebook wall?” or “Mom, you won’t believe what Mrs Y has on her Myspace!” </p>
<p>Second, I am on a business board. One of the members (<em>Jane</em>) came to the board with an issue. A customer had googled the name of Jane’s company, to get some info off their website. The customer saw other links besides the company website, clicked on them, and found a Myspace rant from an employee detailing how much she hates her job, how she thinks she’s going to get fired and so she thinks she just won’t bother to show up, how she’d gone to work drunk, etc, etc. The employer, Jane, was now wondering what to do with the information. The employee has every right to have an opinion about her job, but the employer has every right to protect the reputation of the company.</p>
<p>And as far as snooping, I’m not sure googling ‘Son of Opie’ is much different from calling your last employer and asking them what kind of employee you are, or asking for three personal references and asking them what kind of person you are. Employers want to know that they are hiring ethical, hardworking people who will reflect well on the company.</p>