eChatter

The Hidden Meaning of Emojis

Those seemingly innocent emojis that we use daily…Did you know there is danger lurking behind them?

What can look harmless in a social media post or text message may have a different meaning to teens. The BBC Scotland recently aired a documentary on kids selling drugs online. An excerpt follows:

Teenagers are employing a code made up of ’emojis’ – small digital images normally used to convey emotions – to conceal the deals. One of the country’s largest drug gangs told a BBC documentary 75% of their takings now come through social media transactions, using ‘digital-savvy’ school pupils.

Film-maker Stacey Dooley confronted the young dealers, highlighting the ease with which illegal transactions can be arranged. One of them, 15-year-old ‘Denver’, was wearing his school uniform when he was filmed trying to sell her seven pills of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, at Maidstone railway station.

In the show, Stacey met Corey, from Glasgow, who said he’s been buying ecstasy since he was 12.

“It’s always been online for me,” he claimed, “It’s mainly through Snapchat and Instagram. You can get them in seconds straight to your door.”

“I think the draw to Snapchat is the fact that the messages aren’t permanent,” Corey observed. “You can speak to a larger amount of people and you can show it to people who are thinking about taking drugs.”

‘Digital’ Dealers

Using fake profiles on Instagram, Snapchat and the new ‘Tinder for Teens’ app Yellow, Stacey revealed how easy it is for children and young teens to get their hands on Class A drugs via seemingly unmoderated and unprotected social media platforms.

She was able to use emoji to ask for drugs and then arranged to meet and confront the ‘digital’ dealers.

What do you think? The more we know as parents and law enforcement professionals, the better. Social media is changing every day.

Parents: Have You Heard of Finsta?

If you’re scratching your head wondering if this is yet another social site to keep track of, don’t worry, it’s not. Well, not really.

Finsta is just another way teens and young adults are getting around public social sites. Finsta is simply another name for “fake Instagram.” Basically, this is a second Instagram account people (usually the younger set) will create with a name that’s not easily identifiable where they typically post things that they wouldn’t want Grandma or Aunt Sally to see.

Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some teens create finsta accounts simply to post things they don’t want their parents to see, or pictures that are not filtered and “at their best” but they hold some humorous value they want to share with a select few, but it may not be risque or “sketchy” posts. In other cases, it can be used for less than desired activities, such as posting racier pictures or sharing risky behavior, or, even worse, being used to harass someone online.

To get a better sense of understanding why some choose to “finsta”, you may want to read this insightful article written by a teen that talks about why they choose to create finsta accounts.

How do you know if your teen has a finsta? There may be a few ways to find out:

Take a look at their followers: often times teens will follow their finsta account and won’t be as creative as they think they are with a user name for the fake account. One example would be a girl named Julia Luckett creating a finsta user name of JulieInABucket. Other times they will use a picture of themselves as the profile picture on their fake account.

If they’re a younger teen, take a look at their Instagram account on their phone. Most times, since Instagram allows multiple accounts to be created, the teen will simply create a second account under the same email and/or mobile number. In this case, if you look at their user name at the top of the page, you’ll see an arrow next to it – that can be used to see if there are multiple accounts created. If your teen is more savvy, they may create a second account with a “throwaway” Gmail account that you may or may not be aware of. In this case, it may be more difficult to ascertain their finsta account.

If you use a regular social monitoring service, be sure to include all known email addresses and phone numbers. Don’t forget to include old email addresses, school email addresses, land lines, and all cell phone numbers (even old ones). Providing this information when using a social media monitoring service will be helpful in identifying all social accounts for your teens.

Not only does social media change constantly, but so do the way teens use it (and find workarounds in using it in different ways). It can be challenging to keep up with, but worth it in so many ways. While finsta is fairly new, it won’t be long before the next new site or way to use a site pops up. When it does, we’ll be here to tell you about it.

Two Cases of Social Media Gone Wrong in Court

Social media content is being incorporated into trials across the world, and the legal system is still trying to determine how to best allow this, what’s legally able to be used as evidence, and other aspects of how social media is/can be used in court. As this is being hashed out, social media continues to impact the legal system in a variety of ways. The following two examples were recently noted in the news; one shows how a judge can be impacted by social media and the other shows how social media content can result in a mistrial.

Mistrial due to social media content

Last month, the Monitor published a story about a high profile, gang related trial that ended up being declared a mistrial. Why? A witness that had testified for over two hours and was given explicit instructions to not talk about the case did exactly that on social media only hours after testifying. According to the article, the witness admitted to posting articles and comments about her testimony after taking the stand, and a social media post she published stated that she had ingested Spice (synthetic marijuana) prior to testifying in court. Despite the witness claiming that she did not post this statement, it was allowed to be used in court and was considered in the decision to declare a mistrial.

This case is interesting in that it shows that what a witness or even juror posts can be used as evidence in court. However, there are methods that need to be used to appropriate capture and memorialize the content that a lawyer wishes to use as evidence – the “rules” are still murky but are being developed quickly across the country.

It also highlights the importance of monitoring social media during a trial, both for general content and for individuals involved in the trial, whether it is a juror or witness, to ensure that instructions are being followed to avoid situations such as the one above.

Judge are recused from case due to social media content

The Chicago Tribune published an article related to an Indiana case in which three judges have recused themselves, citing a potential conflict of interest from both attempted conversations on social media and phone calls, as well as visibility of social media content that may have been seen regarding the upcoming trial. One of the recused judges made a statement about her decision:

“Prior to the transfer of the above causes of action from Judge Julie Cantrell, this court overheard several attorneys discussing these cases in detail and saw several social media posts that create a conflict of interest.”

Another judge stated:

“Numerous uninvited ex-parte communications have occurred or been attempted through social media and telephone calls to influence this court,” Cantrell wrote in her order to transfer the case, saying the transfer was necessary to avoid the appearance of impropriety.”

The case has been assigned to a fourth judge, and as of this writing it is unclear whether that judge will hear the case.

This illustrates how social media can impact high profile cases, both from the stance of a judge being able to hear the case without possible conflict of interest as well as from the perspective of finding an impartial jury. Social media makes it much more difficult to find local residents who are completely impartial and have not read or heard about some high profile cases.

What’s Your Story?

Social media background checks are useful to learn more about a person. Many services offer high level scans of an individual – some focus only on social sites while others can collect content from across the web.

One of the reasons I find social media background checks so fascinating is that it’s so much more than a scan using one or more software platforms – it’s about building a story, and from my experience, no two searches are the same.

A good social media background check starts with a scan of course – it’s a great starting place to start to paint the picture of who the individual is and what their story looks like. It doesn’t stop there though – additional manual research and result filtering is needed to be able to truly get a picture of the individual you’re researching.

In the time we have conducted social media background checks, I’ve learned many things:

Social media research for individuals is so interesting. By collecting content created by or about an individual, you can really start to get an idea of what the person is like without ever meeting them.

Individual background checks for some industries, such as Human Resources, are a bit different. When it comes to other industries, such as investigations or insurance research, it’s much more robust and, in my opinion, interesting.

No software is perfect. We utilize a suite of software programs for this very reason. We use one program as our “base” but rely on the others to fill in the blanks. The final part of our research is manual – corroborating results found and connecting some dots outside of the software programs is vital to a detailed, valuable report.

A search is only as good as the information provided. It’s amazing how much you find about someone given very little information. However, conducting a thorough search requires much more information than a first name, last name, and city of residence. The more information provided, the better the results.

Conducting social media background checks has been a favorite part of the work I do. Some stories are happy ones, while others have saddened me greatly. Either way, I know that we are helping our clients get a better understanding of the people and cases they are investigating, one story at a time.

HR & Social Media: Protected Class Guide

You can’t unring the bell … why put yourself (or your company) in a potentially sticky situation when it comes to hiring and the use of social media as part of the hiring process?

HR departments are using social media as a tool for potential employee research, though this has been one industry that is slow to warm up to the idea. In some cases, it may simply be that the company doesn’t have enough manpower or time to devote to another task; for others, they may see it as a still very grey, muddy area they don’t want to get involved in.

Part of the fear is knowing what’s okay and not okay to see, and how to make sure your hiring managers are only seeing the “right” content. There are many ways to work around this, including using a third party vendor or making sure that the person doing the social media research is not the hiring manager; by doing this, you can make sure that your company is in compliance with the FCRA.

Did you know there are federal and state specific protected classes? If your company spans the country, are you aware of the different classes?

Here are some interesting examples:

Whether a candidate obtained a GED vs graduating from high school is a protected class in PA
Place of birth is a protected class specific to VT
Height & weight is protected in MI
The following states only follow federal statutes and do not have any state specific protected classes: AL, ID, MS, SC

These are just some of the protected classes; while these may seem like areas that would not come to light when viewing a person’s social media sites, it’s possible. And what about the more commonly shared pieces of information, such as marital status, whether or not someone is a parent, or mental illness history? You never know to what extent people share their lives online anymore; it’s best to err on the side of caution.

If you are handling social media background checks internally, we’d like to share a list of protected classes at the federal and state levels.

Federal

Age (over 40)
Color
Disability
Genetic Information
Military Status
National Origin
Race
Religion
Sex (includes pregnancy)
Veteran Status

State

Protected classes vary by state. Click here to see the state by state list of protected classes