Just as we thought the Internet couldn’t get any more—choose your favorite word: annoying? invasive? chaotic?—a series of unprecedented events has stirred up even more drama. This is an opportunity to note their relevance to the world of online reputation management, privacy, and ethics.
– Google was found to have concealed a breach related to its largely-unused social platform, Google+. 496,951 users’ full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation and relationship status have been “potentially” exposed since 2015.
–Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk paid a $20 million fine after a series of Tweets he sent out were viewed as misleading by the SEC. This confirms that if you are a CEO of a public company, it is a mistake to manage your own social media accounts. If you want to present an authentic online image of yourself or engage your audience, use a trained professional. Better, stay off of social media altogether.
–50 million Facebook users were hacked—and nobody knows how extensive the privacy breach is or what the hackers will do with the private messages and other data they have gathered. This reinforces the wisdom that you should never put your real birthdate on any social media profiles like Facebook; it just makes it easier for your identity to be stolen.
–The U.S. Supreme Court nomination debacle showed us that virtually anything from our past can and will surface on Google (perhaps worst of all, our awkward high school yearbook photos). All the more reason to ensure that the portraits you actually want the world to see are well-situated online, should CNN or The Washington Post decide to run unexpected coverage of you.
–Europe’s highest court was charged with deciding whether the “Right to be Forgotten” on Google should apply across the entire World Wide Web. This would require search engines to remove selected information from results anywhere in the world. Right now, that law applies just to Argentina and the EU. The final decision—anticipated sometime next year—will represent a landmark moment in addressing whether the global Internet, namely tech companies and other intermediaries, will remain free of legal responsibility in safeguarding your name, reputation and privacy.
How are you and the Internet? Are you satisfied with how the world sees you online?
Related reading: Reputation Issues Faced by CEOs, Celebrities & VIPs