RSA: Young Adults Are Reckless About Online Security www.MaintainMyPrivacy.com 2of2

Is it a positive? And posting stuff online that is, you know, your— again, your blog or your website, whatever it is, that shows you in a good light.

And what are— is there anything else you can do besides blogging? Because that's only going to give you one link, right?

Yeah, you can also sign up for dozens of different social media sites. I'm a member of hundreds of different social media sites, and all of those social media sites, they get my RSS feeds from my blog, and I tweet out to them, and I go through something called Ping at Ping.fm. I send out all my feeds, like I syndicate my content to them, and that shows it goes up in the top of search and that pushes any of the bad stuff down. It's all good stuff that you put out there.

What kind of bad stuff are you pushing down?

Well, if there's any bad stuff, not me. If there's any bad stuff, you know—

I thought I had you. Yeah.

Well, you know, we're in a different world today and if you're out in the job search and you know, you're putting yourself out there, you want to make sure that it's all in a good light.

Okay, but I think it's funny that you say we're in a different world now because the truth of the matter is, is more and more as we go down the line, this line, this barrier between your work life and your personal life, or your public life and your personal life, it's all starting to blur. And I think in the past probably 5 years, if not more, you've seen it happen more and more increasingly. And so I'm wondering, I mean, these pictures of, you know, so-and-so was holding a beer in that picture and the employer frowned upon that, so he didn't get hired, or so-and-so was smoking a cigarette in another picture. I mean, these are things that are not uncommon to be done when you're out acting, not in a, you know, not in your work environment. Right. So I'm wondering if going down the line you think that these things are going to start to become more acceptable because they're more out there.

That is always a possibility. But if right now I just pulled out pictures of and showed you pictures of my kids, you'd say, "Oh, that's really nice," and it puts me in a certain light. And then I show you a picture of me swigging beer out of a funnel off of a keg, you'd obviously say, "Oh, Mr. Siciliano, that's a little, you know, interesting," you know, "it's a little odd." It's not something that you would, you know, present in a professional situation.

No, I wouldn't expect you to flash it out on a PowerPoint, but if I go digging through your Facebook profile and that's what I find, isn't that kind of what I'm asking for?

And human resource officers are doing that right now.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's why this generation needs to understand that while they know that there are risks, they're not doing anything about it. Right. And so they need to recognize that, you know, somebody at some point is going to call you on the carpet, and they're going to say, "Hey, you know, unfortunately, we're going to pass on you," and they may or may not tell you why. But if you go and you do some searching on yourself and you look at your own Facebook page and somebody on your Facebook page just talks about, you know, let's, you know, go out Friday night and get smashed, obviously that's going to put you in a sour light. And so you want to be able to control that stuff and you want to make sure that those who you socialize with, those who are posting on your site, those who you are communicating with, that you're friends with, that's all going to have repercussions on your professional life as well.

But do you think those repercussions are going to become less and less as people just grow more used to seeing so-and-so holding a beer on their personal Facebook page?

Here's the thing, we live in a litigious society.

Uh-huh.

And in a litigious society, what we are and what we post can come back to bite us.

Okay.

So if you hire somebody that shows a history of drinking a lot of alcohol and then they come on the job and they're drunk and they fall down and they hurt themselves and they sue you, well, you should have known that they might have done that because if you look at their Facebook page, it shows picture after picture after picture of them doing keg stands. So in a litigious society, you know, we are being catalogued and that information could be used against us.

Yeah, there actually have been court cases where that's happened. Someone gets busted for a DUI because of a picture of them drinking or— There you go. A lot of divorce cases this comes up. Now they're trying to look at text message, so even that's not really as private as we all think.

I have a good friend who's a lawyer and going through a custody battle and her attorney had gone right to her Facebook page and looked at all the people she was socially is familiarizing with all the different pictures and is using that against her.

And so, how can you continue to sort of use these social media networks the way they were intended without making yourself so vulnerable?

Well, first, you know, again, I'm working with RSA, so go to maintainmyprivacy.com. At maintainmyprivacy.com, we've put together a number of different tips that you can digest so that you know what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Okay? And the more informed you are, the more aware you are of these issues, the better off you're going to be. Those who are just kind of going about their business and just kind of rolling with the flow and doing all these things that 18 to 24-year-olds do, and they're cataloging and documenting and recording their life step by step and they're posting it online, are making it easy for the bad guy, for the identity thief, and they're making it difficult for themselves to advance in a society that requires you to be upstanding and upright and, you know, conscious and not doing things inappropriate, you know? I mean, really, you know? Exactly.

And so, I mean, this is just another, basically another nail in their coffin if they're already lined up for a job that they're— this is very competitive. You're saying these employers are going through your social media site, and if they see a picture that they don't like, then you're not getting the job.

In an economy where, like you said, it's a competitive economy They're gonna hire the person whose social media comes up with all positive stuff.

Mm-hmm.

The fact that they were— they did all these things, they volunteered for this.

But the person could be a crazy person underneath. They just don't post it on their Facebook profile.

So be it.

Fair enough. Hmm. So any parting thoughts for us? What should we keep in mind as we go off and sail out into this world of social media?

Well, for one, you know, again, go to maintainmyprivacy.com. Understand what's going on, what the issues are. Make sure you do things like invest in identity theft protection. Make sure your antivirus is up to date. Have spyware removal programs. Make sure that your wireless connection to the internet is secured. Make sure that you have encryption on your PC. Do all these different things, these fundamentals, to make sure your computer is secure, that your identity is secure, and make sure that you're just smart about social media.

And what about the social media aspects that they say, the limited profile, or these pictures are private just for me, or whatnot. How much faith can we put in that?

Privacy, to a certain degree, is dead. And so if you think that only you and your friends are gonna see it, you're not paying attention. I've seen plenty of situations where the professor from the university thought that she was— her information was private. She said something nefarious about a student who she wanted to smack on the head, and next thing you know, she's getting, you know, fired from her position. So it's even happening to very smart, intelligent people.

So we can't trust the, the only my friends can see this photo?

You can set your social media to all the privacy settings you want, but if you're friending 1,000 people, chances are one of them is the human resource officer who's going to want to come in and see what you're doing.

Now, do they ever go on and go on with fake profiles?

Oh, certainly they do. Absolutely.

That's so sneaky.

Law enforcement is doing it. FBI, CIA, Secret Service, our government is doing it.

Oh, that part I know. I wrote an article on that.

Yeah.

I didn't realize HR people were being so—

HR people are definitely doing that. College administrators, admissions offices, they're all trying to friend you. They want to know what's going on.

All right, so I'm going to go delete my Facebook and LinkedIn and all my profiles now.

Well, just be smart about it.

Thank you so much for being on, Robert.

Thank you very much.

And that's it for our On the Job Hunt segment. So be careful with your social media, but use it to network. And again, if you're on the job hunt, email us at stratinteract@gmail.com with your story. And hopefully we'll get you on it. Bye!