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Facebook! It's fun! It's wonderful! It's
dangerous!
Dangerous? How is Facebook dangerous,
you ask?
2007: Zachary Good
was a junior at Penn State, and a writer
for the Daily Collegian, Penn State's
student newspaper. He was fired from
that position. Why? Because of
inflammatory comments he made on
Facebook concerning a fundraising event
at Penn State.
In the same year, Kevin Colvin was
fired from his position in an internship
at the Anglo Irish Bank for putting
pictures of himself in a costume on
Halloween onto Facebook, after having
asked for time off on Halloween due to a
"family emergency."
2008: 13 employees
of Virgin Atlantic were fired for having
made insulting comments about passengers
and the quality of the plane on their
Facebook pages.
2009: Dan Leone, who
worked for the Philadelphia Eagles, was
fired after he criticized the actions of
the Eagles with profuse expletives on
his Facebook account.
2010: Jamere
Holland, a football player at the
University of Oregon, made some racially
charged comments on his Facebook profile
and was kicked off the team as a result.
2011: Doyle Byrnes,
a nursing student at Johnson County
Community College, was expelled for
having put a picture of herself holding
a human placenta onto her Facebook
account. Three other students were
expelled along with Ms. Byrnes.
These are just a few stories out
there of how using Facebook can have
rather unintended consequences.
According to a 2009 statistic, 8% of
companies out in the world today
reported having dismissed employees for
the use of Facebook or other social
media sites, and that number has only
risen since.
With all that taken into account,
would you really be at all surprised to
find out that college admissions
officers are going to look at
applicants' Facebook profiles? That they
may make decisions based on what they
see?
No? Not surprised? Good. That's the
first step in being able to protect
yourself and prepare your Facebook
profile for the admissions process.
Follow these tips and tricks, and you'll
be able to steer clear of a Facebook
fiasco with your own name on it.
1. Discretion is
the better part of getting into college
Don't say anything on Facebook
that you wouldn't say in a loud, strong
voice, in public. It's an even better
idea to go with, "If you don't have
anything nice to say, don't say anything
at all," but if you've just got to let 'er
rip with something not so nice, think
twice about it. If it's not up on
Facebook (or on the Internet at all),
then it can't come back to bite you.
2. Keep yourself
to…yourself
Use Facebook's tools to remove
yourself from Facebook's searching
tools. Go to your search privacy
settings page, and set your search
visibility to "Only Friends." This will
keep people who aren't your friends on
Facebook from finding your profile. Now,
all you'll have to do is make sure you
only friend people you're okay with
seeing your profile. Meaning, you'll
probably want to avoid friending
teachers, professors, or admissions
officers at colleges.
3. Privacy and
Google don't mix
Make sure there's no public
search listing for your Facebook
profile. You can do this on the same
search privacy settings page as above.
If there's a public search listing for
your profile, then people can find it
through Google. This is not a good thing
if you want to keep your Facebook
profile private. Make sure the "Create a
public search listing for me and submit
it for search engine indexing" box is
unchecked.
4. A picture can
be worth way too many words
Protect your photos, and photos
of you. Plenty of times people have
gotten in trouble for what they wrote on
Facebook, but as many or more times,
people have gotten in trouble for what
they visually documented on Facebook.
In the first place, you might want to
think twice before you have your friend
take that picture of you with the keg
held above your head as beer cascades
down on your face. But beyond that,
you're going to want to change the
settings for your pictures so that only
the people you want to see your pictures
will be able to do so.
On your profile privacy page, make
certain that the "Photos Tagged of You"
settings are customized so that "Only
Me" and "None of my networks" can see
the pictures. This is the most extreme
setting, and it will ensure that photos
tagged of you are only visible to you,
and won't be reported across the board.
If you want a more nuanced setting, you
can set it up on that page, too. You'll
also want to make absolutely certain
that your own photo albums are protected
similarly. You can make your photo
albums private using the Photos Privacy
Page.
5. Don't make
your thoughts and feelings into news
You'll want to keep your news
updates restrained if you want to
protect yourself from any problems with
admissions officers finding out about,
say, your…ahem…strong feelings after
your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up
with you. To do that, you'll have to go
to your News Feed and Wall Privacy
settings page. There, you can remove
your relationship status from public
view, so that none of that will be
advertised.
What's more, you can go to your
Profile Privacy page to make your Basic
Information invisible, which would
include your relationship information
(making your relationship status
invisible on your News Feed and Wall
Privacy page will not remove it from
your Basic Information). This will also
remove anything else in the Basic
Information, but that may not be a bad
thing.
6. Apps? More
like trApps
Be careful around apps. They're
sneaky critters, and they'll often do
things, like posting messages on your
friends' walls, without much warning.
The simplest way to deal with this is
just to stay away from apps as much as
possible.
Okay, okay, I can see your look of
shock from here. You don't have to
totally steer clear of apps, but you'll
want to be as sure as possible that
these apps aren't going to do anything
you're not comfortable with. You'll want
to look into them, and then after you
start using them, watch your wall and
your friends' walls to make sure they're
not doing anything nasty or suspicious.
7. Clean your
wall of graffiti
Get a handle on your Wall. It's
your Wall! Own it! The fact is that you
have to control your wall if you want to
make sure that anyone looking at your
profile won't see anything untoward.
This means making sure that no one is
posting anything inappropriate on your
wall. Even if you make sure you're tamer
than a snowball of a kitten in your own
posting habits, someone else might not
show as much restraint. An admissions
officer who sees an inappropriate post
on your wall is not going to be very
forgiving, despite your kitten-like sad
face. So, using your Profile Privacy
Settings Page, you'll want to control
who can post on your wall.
8. Do unto
others
This one's a matter of courtesy
as much as it is self-protection. Make
sure your friends are private, would
you? On your Profile Privacy page, you
can flip your friends' visibility on
your own account, so that only those you
want to be able to can see who your
friends are. This should keep them
protected, and it'll incline them to do
the same for you.
9. Use a minesweeper on your Basic
Information
Make sure your Basic Information
is cleaned up and safe. You don't want
to have anything vulgar, or incisive, or
disturbing, or problematic in that
information. That's going to be one of
the first things that anyone looking at
your Facebook page is going to see, and
if they see something that turns them
off to you, then you're in trouble. It's
hard to reverse a first impression.
10. Vigilance
Maintain. Everything listed
above? Keep watching it. Make sure that
your Facebook profile remains under your
control, displaying what you want it to
be displaying to the rest of the world,
in the manner you choose. Facebook's own
rules and settings may change, and if
they do, it may disrupt your current set
up. Stay on it, so everything stays the
way you want it to.
Don't drop the ball just because
you've been accepted, either; after
you've been accepted, you have even more
at stake, and you don't want your
acceptance to be retracted after you
post about how awesome it was when you
were so drunk you shoved a glowstick up
your nose.
(Also, don't post about shoving
glowsticks up your nose. See points 1
and 4.)
(Actually, just don't shove
glowsticks up your nose. It doesn't end
well.)
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