social media background check Archives

Snapchat’s Newest Features – 2024

Snapchat has introduced a range of features, both functional and protective, aimed at enhancing user experience while ensuring safety for kids and teens. Here’s a breakdown of Snapchat’s features and how they are working towards protecting minors on the platform.

Snapchat offers several different features and understanding all of them can be difficult at times. We have broken down some of the most used features within the application for you.

Snapchat Terms and Meanings

Snaps are photos and videos that users can send to their friends. After they are viewed they will either instantly disappear or after a 24 hour period. This depends on the settings the user as selected within this field.

Chat is used like a text message. This will disappear after being read (unless saved by the user). The user can also send audio and video messages.

Stories is a 24-hour collection of Snaps that users can post for their friends or the public to see.

Spotlight is a public space for viral short videos, like TikTok. Users can view content based on their interests.

Lenses and Filters are Augmented Reality (AR) filters and effects users can add to their photos and videos.

Discover is a feature where users can find content from publishers, creators, and influencers.

Memories is a private archive where users can save Snaps and Stories for later viewing or sharing.

Snap Map is a feature that allows users to share their location with friends or view the location of friends who have shared their location on the map.

Streaks is a fun feature that tracks how many days in a row two users have been sending each other Snaps.

Bitmoji is where users can create personalized avatars (Bitmojis) to represent themselves in Snaps and chats.

Snapchat Features for Protecting Kids and Teens

Snapchat has taken steps to make the platform safer for younger users, particularly with features aimed at privacy, limiting exposure to inappropriate content, and enabling parental controls. Additionally, Snapchat recently rolled out a resource for educators, explaining what Snapchat is, Safety at Snap, and Educators Tools and Resources. Note, that while these new features and transparency within the Snapchat corporation are aimed at assisting in the protection of minors, there are still workarounds that teens may find accessible.

Age Verification

Snapchat requires users to enter their date of birth during account creation. If users are under 13, they are restricted from creating a standard account.

Note: Users who are utilizing this platform without the supervision of an adult can still create a date of birth that is false.

Privacy Settings for Teens (13-17)

Default Friend Settings: For users under 18, Snapchat defaults to allowing communication only from their accepted friends. Strangers cannot send messages, Snaps, or friend requests unless explicitly added as friends.

Limited Discovery: Snapchat curates and limits the content teens can access in the Discover section to avoid exposure to adult or inappropriate content.

Note: Users are still able to view “friend suggestions”. This means that if Bobby, a current friend of Sarah’s, is friends with John the drug dealer, John may pop up as a “friend suggestion” to Sarah. Sarah may feel safe adding a friend of Bobby’s since Snapchats culture is all about making friends and connections.

Snap Map Privacy

Ghost Mode: Users can hide their location from others by activating Ghost Mode. By default, users must manually opt-in to share their location.

Restricting Location Sharing: For users under 18, location-sharing features are restricted to only friends they have accepted, and public location sharing is discouraged.

Two-Factor Authentication

Snapchat offers two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of security, helping to protect accounts from being hacked.

In-App Reporting Tools

Safety Center: Snapchat provides a dedicated safety center for users to access guidance on privacy settings and how to report abuse.

Reporting Content: Users can report inappropriate content, bullying, harassment, or suspicious accounts within the app. Snapchat’s moderation team reviews these reports.

Restricted Friend Suggestions

Snapchat does not show accounts of teens (13-17) in Quick Add to anyone unless they have mutual friends. This helps prevent strangers from discovering their profiles.

Parental Control Features (Family Center)

Family Center: Snapchat introduced Family Center, a set of tools for parents to monitor and guide their child’s usage without directly viewing their messages.

View Friends List: Parents can see who their child is friends with, allowing them to be aware of connections without invading their child’s privacy.

Report Harmful Activity: Parents can report accounts or concerns directly to Snapchat via the Family Center.

Content Moderation and Filtering

Snapchat uses machine learning and moderation tools to detect and remove inappropriate content, especially in public sections like Discover and Spotlight.

Age-appropriate Content: Snapchat curates content and ensures that minors do not have access to channels or content labeled as inappropriate for younger audiences.

Anti-Bullying Measures

Snapchat encourages positive interactions by allowing users to control who can contact them and limiting the ways they can be discovered by others.

Disappearing Messages: Since messages disappear after being read, this discourages the spread of harmful or inappropriate content.

Blocking and Reporting: Users can easily block, report, or remove someone from their friends list, and Snapchat investigates reports of harassment or bullying.

Time Management

While Snapchat does not offer built-in time limits, it encourages parents to use third-party parental control apps to manage screen time, ensuring teens do not spend excessive time on the app.

Safety Education

Snapchat partners with organizations such as ConnectSafely and the Family Online Safety Institute to educate teens, parents, and educators about digital well-being and online safety.

No Public Profiles for Teens

Snapchat restricts users under 18 from creating public profiles, helping protect their content from being viewed by strangers.

Snapchat has designed a range of features aimed at providing a safe environment for teens while offering privacy control and parental oversight tools. While it continues to evolve and improve, the platform emphasizes privacy and safety for younger users by default.

At E-Chatter we strive to not only educate Private Investigators on how to search through social media platforms, but also shed light on social media topics such as this to educate parents, grandparents, educators, and guardians. Visit our website for additional information on how we and assist you and your online search efforts now.

The Tumblr Comeback

There has been unrest in the world of social media since well known social media and networking site Twitter was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk. Many users are unhappy with the changes that are being brought to the site and are realizing that they will most likely have to share their thoughts, opinions and ideas in a new way on a new platform… And that platform just happens to be Tumblr.

Tumblr was founded by David Karp in 2007, following the recent launch of Twitter in 2006 and Facebook in 2004. The site was built to be a simple microblogging social media platform, but with the feature of being able to share multiple forms of media. Tumblr users could design their own page, posting and sharing videos, pictures, GIFs and text posts. The site quickly gained popularity and by 2013 had seventy-three million accounts. By this time Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo! Inc for 1.1 billion dollars.

For those who never used Tumblr, the site was known to be “whatever you want it to be”. There were no limits on what you could share and or how you shared it and this idea attracted quite the mixing pot of users. The site quickly became ‘fandoms homeland’ according to Mashable. Users got to write fan fiction, share illustrations, clip down moments from shows or movies and repost them out of their original context to fit whatever fantasy they wished.

With this mindset of being free to post whatever you wanted came the infiltration of pornography on the site. Pornography workers who didn’t fit industry standards at the time made their way over to tumblr and grew their fame and following by blogging and sharing explicit images or videos. Tumblr became a site where people freely shared their sexuality, creating and sharing NSFW illustrations, fetish art/pornography, queer erotica and so much more. The layout of Tumblr is unlike the social media layouts we see today. Users do not receive curated feeds based on what the algorithm thinks you would like to see, Tumblr users follow hashtags, keywords and follow pages that are similar to their own, creating a tight-knit community of people just like you.

In 2018 Tumblr saw a major change… Apple removed the app from their app store due to rumors of child pornography being shared on the site. In response Tumblr took action and banned adult content from the app completely. Immediately the users who found fame on the platform began leaving and finding new ways to share their content. The platform relied on digital tools to hand pick the banned content, and of course there were issues. Explicit content was being missed while other content began being flagged even though it didn’t contain anything against guidelines, resulting in even more people abandoning their accounts and fleeing to different social platforms.

This brings us full circle to 2023 where the phrase ‘tumblr comeback’ is being tossed around on the profiles of unsatisfied Twitter users. The millennials that originally had accounts on Tumblr are searching for a new platform to share their thoughts in text form and not in the form of a TikTok video, which is leading them back to Tumblr. Gen Z is also finding their way to Tumblr for the first time. Tumblr, now owned by Automattic, a parent company of WordPress, reports that 61% of their new users are a part of the Gen Z demographic. Also reporting that 48% of the site’s users are Gen Z as well.

The site remains the third most popular blogging site in the US, Canada and the UK, although users had left it in the dust for so many years. Many people don’t believe that Tumblr will ever become relevant again and will crumble as MySpace did, but users are beginning to prove them wrong. Though the site has a long way to go before competing with the Twitter universe, they are an attractive FREE alternative. Heading into 2023, the site has once again lifted their ban on nudity saying in a blog post “we now welcome a broader range of expressions, creativity and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form). Only time will tell if users will continue to abandon the sinking ship that is Twitter and find their way over to Tumblr, whether they are a first time user or are returning back to their beginnings. Either way, we may be seeing a Tumblr comeback.

Poparazzi- A Hot New App Among Young Users

Instagram is one of the most popular photo sharing apps to date. Allowing users to take selfies, discover new filters, talk about themselves, and so much more. Poparazzi flips the script of Instagram and allows users to ONLY share photos of their friends. No selfies allowed! Poparrazzi intentionally takes away the front-facing camera feature so users can only capture photos of their friends and tag them. Poparazzi simply put, mimics a Paparazzi shot.

“We built Poparazzi to take away the pressure to be perfect,” the company wrote in a Medium post announcing it’s launch. “We did this by not allowing you to post photos of yourself, putting the emphasis where it should’ve been all along: on the people you’re with. On Popparazzi, you are your friend’s paparazzi, and they are yours.”

Why So Popular?

In a selfie crazed culture, why is taking pictures of friends all the hype? Believe it or not, there’s been a significant demand for a less performative social platform- mainly among young users. Gen Z is becoming known for their actions, taking the focus off of oneself, statements, or promises made online. They are a leading the way as one of the most impact driven generations to date. Focusing on others over oneself.

According to a recent USA Today article, Youth interest in civic engagement is soaring among the generation that the global volunteering nonprofit Points of Light says was already the most active in history. More than half (53%) of Generation Z individuals said they wanted to get more involved in their communities post-COVID, which was higher than any other generation, according to a 2020 Points of Light survey. (Gen Z includes those born beginning in 1997, so they’re 24 and younger.)

There are several other startups that listened to the voice of young users, like Gen Z, and created similar apps like Poparazzi. These include Minutiae, Vero, Dayflash, Oggl, Dispo, and Herd.

How To Use Poparazzi

One you download and launch the app, a video advertisement is shown, “Your friends are your paparazzi, and you are theirs.” Several photos are shown of teens together with their friends, at parties, football games, in college, and hanging out in groups. After you press “Get Started” permissions are asked since Poparazzi is a photo sharing app. You must allow Poparazzi to access your camera, contacts, and notifications to begin. It then asks you for your age, phone number, name, the username you want to use. Anyone from your contacts that has the app is then shown, inviting you to start following people. Once you have created your account the app takes you to the home screen, motioning you to take your first “pop” which references taking your first picture. Other buttons include search, activity, and your profile.

Mobicip explains, “The most important feature of Poparazzi is that is does not allow users to crop, add captions, filters or any edits to the photos taken. People may be tagged on photos, but they must be on your follow list for the tagged photos to appear in your account. The app automatically follows everyone in the phone book of the phone into which it is downloaded. A “pop” score is given to each profile depending on the number of photos taken. Users also have the option of deleting and untagging pictures they do not want on their profile. Other users may be blocked to prevent “popping” pictures of them and prevent them from tagging your name.”

Other current features are the ability to share a public pop to Snapchat, Instagram Photos, and Instagram Stories.

Searching Poparazzi

Using the small magnifying glass icon on the bottom of the app allows anyone to search through the platform. “Featured Pops” (public pictures taken) flood the screen of young user photos. Some in high school, others in college. These are all public profiles of people, just like you would potentially see on Instagram or TikTok when searching. You can publicly search usernames through the app or follow anyone who has a public account. For investigative purposes, this is another app that is worth downloading, learning, and understanding. Especially if you have any cases with individuals 24 years old or younger. You can easily search for anyone in your contacts, but also usernames, and names of individuals. Remember although others are taking photos of someone, those photos are then tagged and shown on that individual’s profile.

The Dangers

There are several dangers to the platform, like there are with any social media app available. Immediately as I searched the profile, I came across photos of a student pretending to cut another students head off with a real axe in a classroom setting. The next set of photos shown was of a car crash involving two teenage girls. Another of a girl using the restroom in a bathroom stall. Her friend popped over the top of the stall and took her picture. My initial thought when scrolling through? There is a huge lack of privacy within this app but for others who could maliciously post photos of other people.

There are several articles sounding the alarm to the dangers of this app. One interviewing Dr. Pamela Wisniewski, a professor at the University of Florida, who studies the impacts social media has on people.

“Somebody’s going around taking pictures and sharing it of them without their consent,” said Wisniewski. “While there could be some fun and beneficial ways to use an app like this, as you can imagine, there’s also some ways to use it in malicious ways that can actually harm people’s reputation, share embarrassing or potentially harmful material about somebody that then is on the internet to stay.”

Wisniewski adds that it could be tough for parents to take down photos that they do not want posted of their kids. “Being able to wrangle in that content especially once it’s been shared is almost impossible to do,” she said.

Can I Fire an Employee for This?

You are seated at your desk in the quiet of the morning, taking a sip of coffee, scrolling through your emails before the day begins. Suddenly, an email pops up with the subject line, “This isn’t good…” Your heart drops into the pit of your stomach yet quickly you click to open in hopes it isn’t anything too terribly bad. Your colleague has sent you a link to a public Facebook post with an employee speaking derogatorily towards your organization. To make matters worse, the post has gone viral. Sitting back into your chair, you have a thought trace through your head.

“Can I fire an employee for this?”

Your mind races and heads down that unforeseen rabbit hole with the next question.

“What are other employees potentially saying online about us?”

“What does our Social Media Policy state again? Do we even have a policy in place???”

“How will we be perceived by our customers after this viral post.”

“Is all of this even legal?”

To quickly answer a few of these questions upfront, yes, you can fire an employee for this, and it is legal.

Here is why:

According to Attorney Sidney L. Gold, not only do employers have the right to check the social media accounts of prospective and current employees, they also have the right to discipline or even fire a worker whose social media activity violates company policy.

This is all in accordance with state-by-state guidelines and your company or social media policy.

Social Media Policy

Oftentimes a social media policy is completely forgotten about until a PR disaster occurs. Pausing to protect your organization from such occurrences will allow future situations to quickly fizzle out. Creating a strong social media policy is essential. Openly discussing with your employees upfront will set expectations and provide everyone with the knowledge to succeed.

According to Digital Information World, about 51 percent of businesses have a social media policy, however, a certain percent of the employees of such offices, still find social media as a distraction during their work.
These seem like small statistics in terms of hours utilized but unfortunately for you, social media adds up to $6,422.50 lost in a year in the United States for one hour each day.

Social media will never stay the same and more than ever, even to sell, social media is being used by employees to gain new leads. It will always evolve and become something different over time. Revisiting your strategy will become essential in maintaining a strong policy.
Sprout Social provides some excellent ideas to help you maintain the health of your policy.

Fired for Posting

We see this all the time. Police officers, nurses, executives, actors, restaurant staff, and many more. No industry is left untouched when it comes to social media.

In our past blog, Fired for Posting on Social Media, Kathy discussed how one hospital in Wiltshire, England, didn’t share the sense of humor displayed by its employees when they took a few seconds out of their workday to lie down in strange places around their workplace, tagging it “The Lying Down on the Job Game.” When a few hospital employees decided to play along, they posted pictures of themselves lying around the hospital on the floor or even on the helipad. The higher ups decided if they had that much time on their hands, why not have more? They were all fired.

So, what can you do in your organization to avoid a PR catastrophe? There are few services offered that can easily eliminate your employee social media paint points.

3 Prevention Methods

Pre-Employment Screening
A social media hiring report is a great addition to a normal background check. Stay safe, compliant, and protected by hiring a third party to assist. FCRA compliant, we have trained specialists who obtain accurate, curated results, that are ethical and projected into a sleek and user-friendly report on your behalf.

Our Social Media Hiring Report (background check for employment) takes every factor into consideration to make sure that the clients we work for stay compliant on a federal and state level. We ensure that you never see what you shouldn’t see– the report turns up only relevant content that can be portrayed as negative and a detriment to the person’s employment with your company. When important content is identified, the report will only show those pieces of content. If nothing is found that falls into what can be legally obtained/considered when making hiring decisions, a “no pertinent information found” report is filed, meaning there is nothing of concern regarding the candidate.

Corporate Intelligence
Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC)‘s recent report, “23rdAnnual Global CEO Survey,” reveals that around 80% of CEOs have changed their online behavior due to potential risks. Corporate Espionage is alive and well and needs to be taken seriously as more and more employees overshare in social media. This allows for competitors to gain excellent insight into a vast array of information that would not otherwise be easily obtained. Banning employees from using social media at work has proven to be a nightmare and monitoring their social media internally has major privacy concerns. However, when approached correctly this type of monitoring is very valuable to any business of any size.

What makes this tricky, is that the company still has the responsibility to keep their employees safe, protect assets and data, mitigate risk for threats of fraud and monitoring reputation. High level executives travel to areas of the world that do not share the same security measures we do in the United States. Using geo-tagged software can show threats in areas ahead of time, alerting executives prior to arrival.

Employee Monitoring
Have an employee you are suspicious of not following your specific social media policy guidelines? Monitoring an employee for posts that are publicly available is something an employer has the right to do, especially If the employee is posting about work related misconduct, confidential company information or financial information.

Being proactive in enforcing your social media policy is key.

Reputation Management: Hire an Investigator

When you think of reputation management, what industry comes to mind? Perhaps you would think of a PR or Communication company. We have all seen commercials on TV around companies that can help you improve your image. They promise to get rid of those bad reviews, gather up good ones, and make you look like you are the best thing out there. But are they missing something? I believe they are. Here’s why.

Chief Reputation Officer

What many companies don’t think about is that reputation management is something that needs to happen proactively, not reactively. A recent Forbes article titled “Five Reasons Your Company Needs A Chief Reputation Officer” explained it best.

“Most companies, including your competitors, are usually only thinking deeply about reputation management after a crisis has hit. They react and try desperately to repair the damage. This is a huge missed opportunity because the damage done was often completely avoidable. Just like no sports team wins a game playing only defense, your company needs to play strong defense and come out with a strong offense.”
Forbes

Where the Private Investigator Comes In

When I speak to Private Investigators, I am amazed that many have not thought about this area as a vital way to grow their business. In my opinion, they should be considered to be part of any good reputation management program or team. In our digital world, they will be able to determine exactly what needs to be monitored and how. After all, they do this type of investigating all the time.

Family law, infidelity cases and divorce depositions have been mainstream avenues for revenue for decades. Some of the PI’s love them, and some avoid them like the plaque. Those that avoid them do so because of the amount of work vs. the amount of compensation.

Promote your business as a firm that covers Corporate Reputation Management services. By doing so, you are in some ways, investigating for a company in some of the same ways you would be investigating for a cheating spouse. Only better, because the work is proactive VS. reactive. If you catch an issue that a corporation has online before it goes viral, you have saved the day.

Back in June, we wrote about Employee fraud and COVID19. In that post, we cited a Fortune 500 company’s loss of over $100,000.00 because of a plant shut down due to a dishonest employee. It happens more than we know.

Proactive Steps to Take

As a service offering, it is smart to offer a corporate client a deep web scan on their business. What does their online profile reveal? Some things to consider:

Reviews are obvious, but many people think of them as Yelp, Google, and Trip Advisor. They are the biggies, but there is much more out there.

2. Location based Monitoring: Does the company have more than one location globally? By creating a virtual fence around physical locations, an added security level is created for any violent social media mentions in the area. Additionally, automatically pull in any negative keywords for reputation management.

3. Employee Revenge. As more and more employees are laid off because of our current pandemic situation, some are understanding and some are not. It is human nature. Just today, I read a post in LinkedIn about a disgruntled employee telling everyone how she was let go from a major company. She went on to say that she mistakenly placed all of “who she was” around this position for the past 8 years and how this was a major life mistake. Her post gained a lot of views and encouraging comments, as it should. However, think about the company’s name there. Most people are left with the impression that the company did something wrong to her. We don’t know the full story, but it can still leave a lasting impression. Glassdoor is a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies. I will bet many don’t even know about that one site alone.

See the possibilities yet? Do you think in today’s online world, this could be something your firm is capable of doing? Email me if you would like to kick around the idea for your firm.