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Online Reputation Management

It’s not just about resumes anymore…

When applying to college and potential jobs, experts now advise you take it a step further. Creating or updating a LinkedIn profile as well as examining your social media pages can save your reputation and make sure you are putting our best foot forward. It’s good practice to check a few times a year, and remove potentially embarrassing or damaging information. Removing information from the web doesn’t mean it’s gone forever — you should be ready to account for it — but at least you are taking control of the profile that everyone will see. You are updating your online persona to reflect who you are today.

Ann Yates, principal with the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer, explains, “In my work as a search consultant, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t speak with candidates for administrative jobs about a personal or career misstep they’ve made and how to handle it in the hiring process. Because so much information is available about job candidates today, search committees must think carefully about how it influences their decisions.”

“They are going to click on your profile,” says Alan Katzman, the chief executive of Social Assurity, a company that offers courses for high school students on how to shape their online images. Last year, Mr. Katzman’s company advised a high school senior in the Washington area to create a detailed LinkedIn profile and include a link on his application to Harvard. Soon after, LinkedIn notified the student that someone from Harvard had checked out his profile. Mr. Katzman says that high school students who use social media to showcase themselves may gain an edge with colleges. “No one has quantified the power of this,” Mr. Katzman told me recently. “But I maintain that it is very powerful.”

Vicky Rideout, a researcher who studies how teenagers use technology, says “Using LinkedIn on college applications, she says, “is yet another way for there to be a disparity between the haves and the have-nots.” A recent study from Kaplan Test Prep of about 400 college admissions officers reported that 40% said they had visited applicants’ social media pages, a fourfold increase since 2008.

Some high school students are establishing LinkedIn profiles to give the colleges that do look something they would like them to find. Students who naturally tailor posts for their peers on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook told me they used the professional network as a separate space to market their accomplishments to adults.

“I did not make a LinkedIn profile for my friends,” says Matthew Martratt, a 17-year-old high school senior in Marietta, Ga., who is an Eagle Scout and a member of his school’s marching band and organizes community service projects. “I made it to show people who don’t know who I am what I am about.”

Mr. Martratt, who took a LinkedIn course from Social Assurity, said he followed colleges to which he intended to apply on LinkedIn and Twitter and posted about them. “It’s like sending them an invitation to look at my profile,” he said. “When I get likes or notifications back, it shows that they are looking.”

LinkedIn has proven it’s the place to find and be found. The site has well over a million and a half student jobs and internships. And more than 9 in 10 companies use LinkedIn to recruit new hires.

Want to make your profile stand out?

Follow these top tips:

1) Upload an appropriate photo. Profiles with photos get 14x more views.

2) Write an informative but catchy profile headline.

This is a short, memorable professional slogan. It’s the one thing you want a recruiter, hiring manager, or future co-worker to know about you.

3) Make good use of the Summary statement.

Think of the Summary like the first few paragraphs of your best-written cover letter: Concise about your experience, qualifications, and goals. Describe what motivates you, what you’ve done and are skilled at, and what makes you unique. Be clear and confident!

4) Be smart about your experience.

List the jobs you’ve held and a brief description of what you were responsible for and what you accomplished. This section can be more or less detailed than your resume. What really matters is that you’re not leaving out critical details about your work history.

And don’t forget your volunteer activities. 20% of hiring managers in the U.S. say they’ve hired someone because of volunteer experience. It’s also a good profile addition because it reveals your passions and rounds you out as a human being.

5) Show your work.

You can now add real examples of your writing, analysis, design portfolios, or other work directly on your profile. Upload or link to rich media, documents, or presentations. This helps make your profile more visual and interesting, while demonstrating your value as an up-and-coming professional.

Social Media Identity Theft

How to protect you and your children’s accounts

Social media is no longer just a way for us to connect with friends and family. It’s how we connect with the world in general. By sharing photos, kids sporting events, places we like to visit, vacations, and other personal information, we make it easy for cyber thieves to gather specific data about our lives.

What exactly is cyber identity theft?

Online or cyber identity theft refers to a group of behaviors that can unfairly jeopardize or tarnish a victim’s reputation. Most commonly, this form of identity theft involves using someone’s likeness online, usually to pose as them and supplant their existing online presence.

For example, many parents like to share pictures of their kids online. But posting those precious photos could result in issues with identity theft, advertisements, or online predators.

Bree Fowler is the privacy editor for Consumer Reports. She warns parents to be careful. “Seemingly harmless information like your child’s name, their age, what they look like, where they go to school, all of that information can be used to create a profile that a hacker can use down the road for identity theft,” said Fowler.

How can you be sure your child’s identity is safe?

Set your social accounts to their highest security and privacy settings.You should ensure that none of your accounts are leaking information to parties whom you don’t intend to share information. Also, make sure that you review your social media post visibility after software updates to make sure your settings remain private. Finally, make sure that your account security is strong by using complex and unique passwords, two-factor authentication and good account reset questions.
Don’t use hashtags. It makes it easy for cybercriminals to find your photos.
Don’t use geotags. It gives criminals an easy way to find your child’s location. If you do not change your privacy settings, each time you post or add new pictures it will tag the exact location where you posted from.
Be skeptical of links to unfamiliar websites, especially ones that promise shocking video, photos or gossip. They may be designed to hijack control of your account and information, and trick your friends into doing the same.
If you log into social media on someone else’s computer, remember to log off before leaving and do not check the box to remember your username or password.

What can you do if you become a victim?

Contact the admins of the site or service where your identity is being abused or where your account was stolen.
Notify friends, family and followers, if possible.Anyone who you regularly talk to or do business with has a right to know that you’re no longer in control of your online identity so that they don’t fall for any scams your identity thief might try.
Monitor your online identity and change your passwords.As a precaution, you might want to monitor your other online accounts to verify that they haven’t been breached as well. Also, consider an identity theft protection service. Most of the top-rated services will monitor the use of your information on the Internet black market, allowing you to catch further abuse of your identity.

How Social Media Helps Solve Crimes

We no longer live in a world of modesty. It seems nothing is off limits these days…online confessions, incriminating selfies, and detailed accounts of crimes. Experts now explain how social media has helped solve numerous investigations.

Take 22-year-old Melinda Vasilije, who was found stabbed to death in her Kitchener, Ontario apartment. Soon after, a Reddit post titled “Wanted for Kitchener murder – my side” surfaced. It was allegedly authored by Ager Hasan, 24, Vasilije’s former boyfriend.

In what allegedly appeared to be a detailed confession, Vasilije explained in detail what happened that night. He also posted photos of the former couple together and screenshots of text messages between them. Hasan went on the run in the United States while a warrant was out for his arrested and has been charged with second-degree murder. Preliminary court proceedings are currently underway.

While most social media posts to be self-serving, Hasan’s posts while on the run seemed reactionary rather than motivated by an audience. However, there have been a number of recent cases where it’s obvious the suspects wanted an audience.

For instance, the 24 year old “selfie killer” Amanda Taylor, who was convicted of murdering her father-in-law, 59-year-old Charlie Taylor. Amanda took a selfie holding a bloody knife in front of the dead body of her father-in-law. She then posted it on her social media. While she was on the run she still made time to update Instagram with a photo of a gun in her lap and a note that seemed suicidal in tone. “Alright… It’s about that time. I’m going to go find my husband in Hell and finally be at peace.” Amanda is now serving life in prison after being found guilty of first-degree murder.

When asked why she would post about committing murder on social media, she told local media: “I guess I was proud of what I had done and like I got online and saw a couple different news postings and me and Sean, like, we were wanted,” she said. “They were looking for us, and I don’t know, I just felt the need… I was excited that I had finally [done] it.”

Another example of incriminating social media posts involves Cheyenne Rose Antoine, a 21-year-old woman in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison for killing her best friend. A key piece of evidence that was used to prove she had killed her friend, 18-year-old Brittney Gargol, was a selfie of the two women that showed Antoine wearing the same belt that was found next to Gargol’s body on a road near a landfill.

Lisa Watson, who was Antoine’s criminal defense lawyer, said she’s been seeing social media come up more often in criminal cases since she started practicing law in 2010. “It was all very foreign when social media kind of started exploding onto the scene,” Watson said. “Courts now, at least in my experience, are much more familiar with the various social media platforms.” Watson said Facebook in particular is one platform she’s seen progress in recent years.

“It seems there’s more of an acceptance of evidence coming forth from social media in criminal courtroom now,” Watson said. “Anything that gets written down or recorded, posted, anything like that, people just don’t realize the amount that it can be used and the ways it can be used in a courtroom. Be cautious about what you post,” Watson warns, “and be aware that it can be used perhaps to help you, but perhaps to form a criminal prosecution against you in the future.”

Law enforcement agencies are also turning to social media as a means of both solving crimes and connecting with the public. After 39 years in law enforcement, Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey has created a unique use of social media to apprehend alleged perpetrators.

Since taking office in 2013, his department’s Facebook page has amassed more than 100,000 followers. Ivey’s “Wheel of Fugitive” broadcast on Facebook and YouTube, in which he asks the public for tips to locate individuals with current warrants (and yes, he spins a wheel with their mug shots), has led to a number of arrests over the past half-decade. Ivey says his team’s social-media output reaches between 300,000 and 700,000 people weekly—far more than they could hope to reach with more conventional methods.

“When I became Sheriff in 2013, one of my goals was to get vital crime information to the public before they became a victim, and not after,” says Ivey. “We found out very quickly that the overwhelming majority of people were using social media to interact.”

According to Ivey, the success rates in delivering and obtaining information this way, he says, are unprecedented. With the “Wheel of Fugitive” program, Ivey estimates, as much as 88 percent of perpetrators turn themselves in or are found using citizen tips.

The bottom line is that social media is fair game. Everything you post is public and could be used to help or hinder your case. So think twice before you post!

Teacher Sex Crimes & Social Media

While there are many positives to the use of social media, there are just as many negatives. The rise in teacher performed sex acts has brought to light what advocates say is a life-threatening issue to children across the country.

Just recently, Cleveland County deputies arrested 25-year-old Emma Costner after they accused the former math teacher of performing sex acts with a 17-year-old student.

“This is a school safety issue that’s ignored,” Terri Miller, president of the Nevada-based group, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation, said. “In 2016, there were 540 reports, and it spiked last year in 2017 to 698 reports.”

What is causing the sudden increase?

Experts believe one reason for this dramatic rise is social media, which makes it easier for teachers and students to communicate through text messages, Facebook and apps like Snapchat. Miller said parents should monitor their children’s phones and social media profiles and know what apps they are using at all times.

“Because you just don’t know who’s going to climb in bed with your children through that technology,” Miller said.

According to the most recent data from a nationwide survey of 8th- to 11th-grade students asking about incidents of unwanted sexual attention at school, nearly 7%, or about 3.5 million students, report having physical sexual contact from an adult, most commonly a teacher or coach, in their school (Shakeshaft, 2004). These students describe unwanted touching on breasts, buttocks, and genitals; forced kissing and hugging; oral/genital contact; and vaginal and anal intercourse.

Reports of educator misconduct that doesn’t include touching a student, but rather sharing pornography, sexual talk, sexual exhibitionism, or masturbation raised the proportion to about 10%, or nearly 4.5 million students (Shakeshaft, 2004).

What are the warning signs of educator sexual misconduct?

The phrase “educator sexual misconduct” was coined about a decade ago and envelops a range of inappropriate to criminal sexual behaviors that include verbal, visual, and physical misconduct. While some behavior is not criminal, all of the behaviors are unacceptable when directed by an adult, especially a school-based authority figure, toward a student.

What is most alarming is that education and programs to stop sexual abuse are directed toward children, asking them to do what adults will not — report the incidents. While children need to learn risky situation identification and refusal skills, it should not be their responsibility to ensure schools are safe places for all students. That falls on teachers and administrators.

Educators can prevent much of the sexual misconduct in schools if they know how to recognize and respond to suspicious patterns and if administrators enforce an environment of high expectations for behavior. Law enforcement recommends parents have frequent, proactive conversations with their kids about the dangers of being online. It’s one of the only ways that are effective to prevent a child from becoming a child victim because once the predator is engaged with the child, it almost is never reported– even if a sexual assault occurs.

“The child rarely reports to the parent or law enforcement, Hey I’ve been sending nude photos or I’ve been sexting with these people and now they’re extorting me or this person wants to meet me, is that a good idea?” Agent Neville said.

Agent Neville continued by saying law enforcement typically only learns of child sexual assault incidents because of parents stumble upon what has been happening. If that never happens, though, the assault will likely go unreported.

Online Predators: What Every Parent Should Know

Sexual predators do exist and can target both boys and girls of all ages. With the anonymity of the Internet working to their advantage, predators can be whomever they want.

Let’s start by answering the question, what is an Internet or online predator?

The standard online predator’s definition is: any person, male or female, using the Internet for the express purpose of targeting a minor to perform non-consent sex acts. They work through anonymity and manipulation. They use emotional vulnerability and the child’s needs to have their emotional point of view validated. The predator mentality is always studying this behavior and is watching and more importantly stalking their next victim.

Predators typically target children with obvious vulnerabilities:

Unpopular
Feel unloved
Seeking attention and friendship
Low self-esteem and lack of confidence
Isolated from peers
Spend time alone
Often unsupervised
Experiencing family problems

Predators use these issues to befriend the victim and empathize with them while building a “fake” friendship and sense of trust. Social Media provides a means of escape and thus becomes the predominate method for predators to infiltrate an adolescent mind.

Predators can easily find information about potential victims thanks to the internet, social media, and the naivety of children. User profiles can be searched through instant messaging, chat rooms, and video hosting sites such as YouTube. Even simple statements listed on a profile such as school attended, sports played, or pictures in front of a home or car can allow predators to target young people.

In a process known as Predator Grooming, a predator targets a child and engages him or her for the purpose of sexual activity. It involves motivation and intent to sexually exploit the child. It starts with searching chat rooms for child oriented screen names. Once a predator finds a target they will strike up a conversation. Once the victim shows interest it doesn’t take long for the predator to build them up, become their friend, and gain their trust.

What can Parents do to Protect their Children?

Look for potential warning signs from your child, adolescent, or teenager:

Spending a lot of time online or on a device
Receiving texts, phone calls, or emails from people you don’t know
Withdraws from normal activities
Closes computer screen or certain apps when you approach
Uses hidden accounts for email or messaging
Increased sense of stress, worry or desperation

Now it’s time to take action. But instead of inspiring fear in our kids, we want to arm them with information. When you talk to your child, tell them there’s a chance someone could approach them online to get personal information, exchange pictures, and/or meet in person, and it might be someone who feels like an online friend. If that happens and someone starts asking for personal information or talking about sexual stuff, it’s time to get help from an adult.

Know what your child is doing online by asking them which apps, games, and other tech they use. If they’re on social media, friend or follow them. Set rules about times and places for device use — for example, banning phones and tablets from bedrooms. Find out how they chat — is it through an app or their phone’s SMS texting? Make rules around who they can chat with — for instance, only people they know in real life.

If your child plays games, use these questions to probe deeper: Do you chat with others while you’re gaming? What’s been your experience so far? What would you do if someone you didn’t know contacted you? Help them set privacy settings to limit the contacts in their games.

Kids should never share a phone number, address, or even last name with someone they’ve never met. Also, sharing sexy pictures or being overtly sexual online leaves an unwanted legacy, with or without creepy adults, so we need to teach kids about being mindful about their digital footprint. Plus, having nude pictures of a minor — even if you are a minor — is against the law and teens can get into legal trouble as a result.

If you do find your child has had an encounter with a predator or potential predator, make sure you gather evidence by taking screenshots and saving all communications. Get as many details as you can and report it to the platform or service your kid is using, block the person, and find the reporting features on other apps and games your kid uses together. Finally, contact the police. Even though it may seem like a one-time thing, or you don’t want to make it a big deal, it’s best to let the authorities know in case the person is a known offender and to prevent them from doing it to other kids.

About Us:

We have been mining social media since 2007 for our clients. By utilizing best in class software programs, we offer a service called eChatter.

eChatter works with you to obtain your objectives in a fast, accurate and reliable facet. By keeping our strengthened principals, yet evolving with this industry, we lead in social media monitoring. Since 2007, we have been dedicated to providing our customers with the most authentic data.

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