Who is watching you and are you protecting yourself?

I've talked about the necessity to know what the privacy policies are for every online service that you use.  By now, you should be familiar with the various policies of the various services and know how to make changes.   In today's world nothing is really private.  Anyone can take a picture of you and post it online.  Anyone can make a comment or memorialize a comment you make and it will permanently be part of cyber space.

Facebook has recently made their dashboard feature a requirement for all users.  It's an interesting new feature that goes live this week.  Facebook has given every user a "heads up" on this new feature and the opportunity for all users to go through their Facebook history and change their preferences.  You should review pictures, postings, and anything that your friends have linked you to and make the decision to allow it or delete it.  You should also be checking your privacy settings regularly.  Many phones that allow Facebook apps will update the app which can and has changed your privacy settings.  Make it part of your routine to check your settings.

A great time to double check your settings is before you apply for a new job.  Make sure that you have set your Facebook or other media services to be Friends only and not public.  Also go through and look at your postings, pictures, likes, etc. from the point of view of a really conservative stick in the mud.  Anything that could ever possibly looked at in the wrong way or shows you to be anything but professional should be limited or removed.    You should also check the settings on your camera phone and make sure that the GPS feature has been disabled.  The GPS feature allows a person viewing the picture to find out where the picture was taken.

I recently assisted another attorney in locating information on a person that they wanted to collect a judgment from.  This person refused to answer any questions about themselves or their assets and the attorney was at a loss of how to get the information they needed to get the money owed.  We checked Facebook and were able to fins out where this person hangs out, places they've checked in at, where they bank, where they were working, and a great deal of information that led to the collection.  We shouldn't have been able to get any of that information, but this person failed to protect their privacy by blocking the public.

Take the time to protect your privacy.  Know what the polices are for the services you use and check back regularly.  Google recently changed their policies and have set a lot of releases of private information as opt in choices.  This means that they will not release private information unless you agree they can (with the exception of subpoenas or government required releases).  However Google does track what you do, what you look at and search for and use that information for their own business purposes.  Keep in mind that someone is always watching what you are doing.  Protect yourselves.