How to Keep Your Privacy on Social Media from Curious Eyes
Contents
- How to Keep Your Privacy on Social Media from Curious Eyes
- Employee Monitoring Softwares
- What is an employee monitoring tool?
- In what situations should companies monitor their employees on social media?
- How to protect your privacy on social media?
- The Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Social Media from Unwanted Eyes
- Summary
Today, the use of social media has recently increased. Although companies have been actively trying to monitor their employees in an official or unofficial way, in order to protect their own image and to measure the psychology, attitudes, and thoughts of their employees.
In a study conducted on 239 large companies in 2018, (which I believe to be unofficially older when looking at the history, but to speak with official data) it was determined that 50% of the companies monitor their employees on social media using unconventional methods. While these rates were 30% in 2015, it is predicted that they will increase to around 80% in the forecast for 2020 (Kropp,B., 2019).
In a normal situation, such activities are an application to gain insight into how efficiently the employees of the company work and to increase this efficiency. Here, the points investigated by the HR department and which should be mentioned are as follows:
· Determine how comfortable your organization
· Being transparent
· Communicate the results, decisions, and benefits
All this, it is important to show company managers and employees a deeper vision and picture, to know what the company is doing, to explain to the employees why the privacy issue is not fully implemented within the company, and why it cannot be fully implemented, and why it is done. Explaining that the relevant data has been turned into information that will increase employee satisfaction increases the likelihood that these activities will be accepted by the employees. Otherwise, you will face an unsatisfied and distrusting employee profile.
So, what is this employee monitoring software and what does it do? The answer to this will be discussed in detail in the section below.
Employee Monitoring Software
What are employee monitoring tools?
According to Currentware (2022) “Employee monitoring software is a software solution that business owners use to monitor the computer activities(!) of their in-office and remote employees. Employers use employee monitoring software to detect insider threats, monitor employee productivity, and gain insight into how their employees are doing.”
The Teramind(2022) defines employee monitoring software as “Monitor and react to employee social media usage including tracking new comment, edit the comment, new post, and edit post activities. Teramind captured all social media interactions including the date/time, employee, computer, source, action, attachments, and the actual message.”
As you can imagine, companies buy these tools for many different purposes and follow them with or without informing their employees. While this is not a problem for some, it is a behavior that will create a big problem for others.
Here you can see some employee monitoring tools:
· Social Links
· Cofense, Phishme
· Currentware
· Teramind
· Hootsuite
· Nexalogy
· Mentionlytics
· Reputology
· Tweepswap
· Talkwalker
The vast majority of them collect information about the social media activities of the employee through the determination of the public data on the internet by keywords and passing the specified keyword in it, or through the agents installed on the host machines.
In what situations should companies monitor their employees on social media?
According to the Harris survey, 67% of HR professionals search candidates’ social media accounts. At the same time, according to the data in the survey, it was determined that 70% should do this, but 21% did not need it, and the rest were undecided.
So, is this ethical? How will the distinction between professional and personal life be standardized at this point? If the recruiter performs such an activity, it may create a prejudice against the employee from the very beginning. This can result in the employee being criticized not for his job but for his lifestyle. This would potentially lead to the loss of a very talented candidate who could be of great use to the company. This will return to the company not only in this aspect but also as a waste of time, talent, and money.
At this point, it may be a trade secret about any confidential data that companies need to look at, that the employee must be internal to the company, it may be information that must be kept confidential about another employee, apart from information such as whether he shares any details about a product used in the company by giving the company name, he should know. The necessary information is already available in the resume, job interview, onboarding process, and employment. More violates privacy. Having one’s social media accounts open doesn’t change anything. You shouldn’t look. You are responsible for doing your job. It is not for you to criticize or express an opinion about the ideas shared by people on social media, without naming the company, without using any slang, but you should not see it as a limit for you to even give a warning.
I would like to remind the personnel who do this behavior, “Spying on employees’ personal social media can be risky. The Human Rights Act 1998 plays an important role, as Article 8 is the right to respect for private and family life, home, and correspondence and Article 10 protects people’s right to freedom of expression. And when monitoring employees’ social media, there is still a requirement to conform to data protection regulations.
How to protect your privacy on social media?
I would like to create an imaginary character to illustrate the event and explain it in a more understandable way. In this story, let’s name our character Empedocles. Empedocles is an employee who has worked in more than one company, both at homelands and abroad. Let’s assume that one day, he criticizes some of the practices he doesn’t like in the company he works for on social media and follows the social media movements of the employees without informing them that the HR department has undertaken an unnecessary and unlimited monitoring task without the knowledge of the employees in his company. On another ordinary day, while Empedocles is working hard for his company and adding value, he is suddenly invited to a meeting by his manager. After small introductory speeches, his manager comes to the point and asks why he shared such a post on social media. Empedocles naively questioned how his manager had come to know about this post (even though he had encountered such things in the past because he couldn’t fit them in the company he was currently working for, he forgot it out of the corner of his mind).
Empedocles suffered from certain emotions here. These feelings are as follows:
1. Nerve
2. Disappointment
3. Doubt
4. Ambition
Empedocles naturally has a decreased trust in his company and employees. Moreover, although he does not know that his company is pursuing such activities, the possibility of skepticism towards people and the company has increased in his future business life in the same company and subsequently in business life in different companies. Moreover, at this point, the possibility of being ambitious and the possibility searching for weak points may have increased to a high level.
Here, it is necessary to realize how reckless and reckless the employees/institutions, even if they share their private lives publicly, damage the loyalty of the employees and reduce their loyalty to the company.
The Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Social Media from Unwanted Eyes
At this point, I’ll start with addressing twitter first. Although Twitter is a platform established to share people’s ideas by nature, it is the only platform where you can learn about all kinds of social perspectives, ways of thinking, and the mentality of people. Since not only you but also companies know this, they use this platform extensively for both brand reputation and employee tracking. At this point, if your tweets are public, you can search for keywords and monitor your profile with tools that can be used with employee monitor tools and other APIs, or even with the opportunities provided by Twitter itself. For this reason, it is useful to bring your account to “protected tweet account” mode. This alone is not enough, however, you should review the list of people who follow you in your account in detail, and immediately unfollow the account that seems suspicious to you. Thus, tweets in protected accounts cannot be indexed by search engines.
Another thing is to review the other websites you are connected to with Twitter. If there is any website authorization permission that you do not trust and find suspicious, be sure to remove it. In my opinion, remove all of them and do not log in to any website with this method again.
As you can imagine, LinkedIn is the platform that both recruiters and companies use most actively, and it is the most audited platform. What you share there, the information you enter, and every step you take are actually a reflection of your live CV. At this point, this platform is under special control. At this point, the precautions to be taken are almost the same as Twitter. Including allowed websites and apps. In addition, LinkedIn post notifications can be turned off. Because LinkedIn generally broadcasts activity.
In addition, according to Larry Alton “LinkedIn allows users to post updates, much like the status updates of Facebook. Other people, including that outside of your network circles, have the option to subscribe to these updates without adding you as a connection. By clicking on the privacy setting, “Choose who can follow your updates,” you can restrict this audience to your connections, rather than the public at large.”
LinkedIn allows users to post updates much like Facebook’s status updates. Third parties, including that outside of your social networking circles, have the option to subscribe to these updates without adding you as a link. By clicking on the privacy setting for the “Choose who can follow your updates” option, limiting this audience to your connections would be healthier.
Would you like it to find your Facebook posts when they type your name into a search engine? How about potential employers or recruiters? You can turn off search engine indexing by unchecking the “Allow other search engines to link to your timeline” box in Facebook’s privacy settings.
For example, you had a fun night out drinking with your friends in a bar. One of your friends wants to share and tag a particularly embarrassing photo of you drinking beer. You can prevent unintentional tagging by asking for tag request confirmation before your name is linked to a post or photo. This prevents others from adding your name to content without your consent. You can change these settings by visiting the “Timeline and Tagging” section of Facebook.
Instagram is a social media platform where we share sections from our personal lives, upload photos, and add short videos. At this point, it is a platform where you share your social life, places you go, family, and close friends. This is where we need to be more careful. Because it is a place where we share our entire social network environment in every condition, privacy is important here. Recently, in 2022, a large airline company fired some of its employees due to a social media post. As with Twitter, it is useful to set your Instagram account to private mode.
Apart from all of them, it is necessary to pay attention to the applications you install on the phones. Some of these applications monitor the phone in the background and transfer logs. Most of them are not shared with the user, but some events that have been experienced before have occurred. For this reason, it is useful to be cautious.
Summary
In our age, all relevant and irrelevant eyes are constantly scanning the internet and collecting raw data for some reason. This data is generally valid for the marketing departments of companies, companies dealing with TI products working as a cyber security company, research companies, survey companies, or all business areas working with metrics you can think of. At this point, we need to be a little more meticulous about what the data we will share on the internet should be. If we want some privacy, of course. There is a very cliché saying. “The oil of our time is data”. Here we are today. We all know that most people are internet literate (!) now.
The people we call recruiters or head hunters working for companies have now become complete stalkers. But what they miss is that there is always someone technically better than them. At this point, I’ve just told you about simple precautions you can take to protect your privacy. In my next blog post, I will tell you about creating a “cover story” in the language of intelligence and how you can integrate it into the internet and social media. In short, you will create an illusion and people will perceive it like you. In the article that will be in the third series, there will be an article with technical details about how you can stay anonymous on the Internet. I wish you a pleasant reading of this first article, which will consist of three series in total.
P.S.: Who is Empedocles? ;)
References:
· Kropp,B., (2019, May 03), The Future of Employee Monitoring https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-future-of-employee-monitoring , Access date: 22.06.2022
· Chu K.S. (2022) The 5 Best Employee Monitoring Software for 2022 Employee monitoring software — the best vendors to choose from, https://www.currentware.com/blog/employee-monitoring-software/#definition, Access date: 22.06.2022
· Teramind (2022), Employee Social Media Monitoring Software, https://www.teramind.co/features/social-media-monitoring, Access date: 22.06.2022
· Cooper,P.,(2022, June 10), Social Media Monitoring Tools, https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-monitoring-tools/, Access date: 22.06.2022
· Towner,M.,(2022), Should Employers Stalk Candidates On Social Media, https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting/should-employers-stalk-candidates-on-social-media/, Access date: 22.06.2022
· Smith.L.,(2021, July 8), What to do if your employer is stalking you on social media, https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/what-to-do-if-your-employer-is-stalking-you-on-social-media-071626734.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHxJB60qRqEoYvAnPe-keZW7ILVkcr8M1TyLV9E2FY-ub8ics7uaNIcvr2m60OaUZUl1MqJi7rRVSxKETtShaiuAW2Jub_5Jgfg_yTbUhpoA2RGQuRAIWDB7Wx1X5EWe52nPPf2CBm5OqjewXqOCqMDn5zvr55n_C84XkMZZrFwe, Access date: 22.06.2022
· Alton, L. 10 Ways to protect your privacy on social media, https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-ways-protect-your-privacy-social-media.html, Access date: 23.06.2022
Ata Şahan Erdemir
