Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

Defense lawyers, employers and human resource departments are some of the biggest admirers of Facebook and Twitter feeds because they can examine plaintiffs/applicants beyond their resumes and beneath their sharpest deposition/interview attire. Changing your privacy settings can limit who has access to your information but employers have begun to demand access to your private information as a condition of employment.

So do you have any rights when a potential employer asks for your Facebook password and access to THOSE pictures from THAT trip? Recently, The United States Congress considered an amendment to the Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2012 that would ban employers from demanding the passwords of employees' social media accounts. The amendment was voted down so an individual has no rights to protect their social media passwords. Last week, the Maryland General Assembly went in a different direction by enacting a statewide ban of employers demanding access to private material on social media. However, the law still allows Maryland businesses to access the public profiles of anyone they are considering for employment.

Social media has become a new arena for civil litigation, as courts have produced 600 published opinions addressing issues of social media since the beginning of 2010. These cases involve everything from a Connecticut court not allowing Facebook status updates to impeach a witness, to a Virginia plaintiff being sanctioned for 'cleansing' his Facebook page in hopes of appealing to a jury. Social media can only hurt your case while civil litigation is pending because opposing counsel will access your profiles to informally discover as much information as possible. So we recommend writing down birthdays and refraining from all social media until your dispute is resolved.

It is very important to be conscious of the things you are doing and saying on social media. It would be wise to delete all social media content while applying for jobs, unless you are the model citizen. The majority of social medial litigation involves privacy but Americans retain basic freedoms of speech that not all countries have. Swaziland, a Southern African country, has proposed a law that will make it illegal to criticize its monarch on social media. While you are free to criticize The President, you should be prepared to face consequences for criticizing your boss or co-workers.

Social networking has made the world smaller, as more and more individuals post more and more personal information on the internet voluntarily. Facebook leads the way, starting as a platform for college students, accumulating over 800 million active users in less than 8 years.

Social networks have become the subject of lawsuits, as misappropriation of personal information has become a lightening rod for litigation. Google recently attracted multiple lawsuits and negative press with the launch of Google Buzz, a social network similar to Twitter. Buzz used deceptive tactics to hack personal information from its E-mail service without users' permission, exposing and sharing private data, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the Buzz but the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective. Google shut down Buzz, reached a settlement where it must submit to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years, agreed to pay 8.5 million dollars to organizations devoted to internet privacy and is forced to pay out $2,500 to each of the 7 named plaintiffs in a separate suit.

Facebook ran into a similar class action lawsuit when it launched an advertising program in 2007, known as Beacon. Beacon tracked activities of Facebook users on over 40 partner websites (Blockbuster, Fandango, Zappos.com, Overstock.com), even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined to have their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends. Tracked activities included purchasing a product, signing up for a service and including an item on a wish list. Facebook eventually agreed to shut down Beacon, was required to set up a $9.5 million fund to support online privacy and must pay $41,500 to the 19 plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.

It is no secret that you should be extremely cautious when sharing personal information over the internet but the lawsuits discussed above raise the stakes concerning internet privacy. Imagine what other traps await on the internet if repeatable websites like Facebook and Google are willing to hack personal information. All parents should monitor the activities of their children and I suggest asking yourself two questions:

1) Do I want my grandmother to see this picture or post?

2) Do I want complete strangers knowing that about me, my locations or my activities?