Only Online: How to avoid trouble on social networks
Robin Fray Carey (Col ’76) is co-founder and CEO of Social Media Today, a company that helps corporate clients harness the power of social media.
The fail safe method: Unplug your router, rip out your modem and don’t go there.
The notion that many social media evangelists have that somehow the virtual world is an improvement on the actual one is as misplaced as the notion that mid-century urban planners had about gleaming high-rises replacing scruffy tenements. People bring their bad moods, psychotic tendencies and sloppy habits online with them. So beware. As in real life, the more you are online the more likely you will run into trouble.
I suppose it might make sense to define trouble in this context. I’m not sure that virtual trouble isn’t a bit like what my mother told me about “sticks and stones.” But the degree to which you expose yourself to a trouble-maker through your online activity defines what a social network can do to hurt you. That’s one of the reasons I avoid geo-social platforms, which transmits information about your location, often in real time.
Here are some practical tips minimizing your risk while social networking.
- Scrutinize those facebook privacy settings, which are being updated all the time. Make sure you are using the most restrictive versions of your public profile.
- Always tell the truth.
- If you are blogging, or into creating controversial status updates, respond to unfavorable comments right away.
- Employ humor as your best defense against attack.
- If you are using LinkedIn, avoid offering up a personal e-mail account or mobile number.
- Register your (most specific) name as a URL so that someone else won’t hijack it.
Comments
I would like to discuss the assertion made above, specifically that substantive review is a prerequisite to successful preparation for standardized exams. In my estimation, and I should say in large part due to my personal history in preparing for an exam that is highly substantive in nature (the GMAT exam, which is required for admission to business school), I did not feel that I need a great deal of substantive review. On the contrary, I found that I needed to focus almost entirely on the strategic aspects of the exam. For example, in the data sufficiency section, which is without question the most challenging portion of the GMAT exam, strategies are far more important than substantive knowledge.
As a UVA grad myself, I get this magazine in the mail. I was studying for the GMAT exam and saw the ad and contacted Jefferson Prep. To be honest, they have by far the worst customer service I've ever received. Richard, their "president/owner" or whatever title he likes to attach to his name is simply rude. He does not understand what it means to provide someone with a remote sense of customer service. But besides Richard himself, here are my comments after I actually signed up and paid for the course. Its a scam. They have nice people picking up the phone and luring you into signing up, but the tutors are simply "study-buddies". The tutor was a great person, but simply not a great tutor by any standard of imagination. The tutor was not familiar with the updated versions of the exam and they try to teach you things that are outdated. It got to the point where my time was better spent studying by myself rather than wasting with the tutor, and that gets pricey. On top of that, their "corporate office", if you can call the three guys that work in their office that answer the phones, are complete jerks. When they want your money, they are great. As soon as they get the money, and you need some sort of assistance, they refuse to speak with you, and ask you to email them all the complaints, and hang up the phone. I have contacted Better Business Bureau to suspend this company, along with contacting UVA and asking them to never advertise this company. Please save your money. Spend it for great tutors, and there are great tutors out there, but they simply dont work for this company.
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