By Ava Dinges
The other day, one of my friends said that he was going to delete his Facebook account once he graduated, and I couldn’t help but gasp in horror. Life without Facebook? I’m not sure there is such a thing. He said that he didn’t want potential employers gaining access to his facebook account. I told him that that is what privacy settings are for.
Yet my friend’s sacrifice may not be in vain.
According to an article titled “Technical Foul” in Current magazine, there are actually programs out there that make it easier for prospective employers and campus police to browse social networking sites for users’ information. YouDiligence, which was developed by a sports media training company, is one such example.
Fortunately, these programs can only search public areas of profile pages, so privacy settings can work well against them, but that’s only if you diligently update your settings. Every time Facebook adds something new to its platform, it seems that their default setting of choice is public. It takes some conscious effort on your part to keep your profile private.
And now with so many ways to breach even private information, as I talked about in my previous blog about Facebook applications, is not having a social networking account the only way to prevent your information from being used against you? They say abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method. Just say no (to social networking)!
Courtesy of: the Nebraska Department
of Health and Human Services.
But resorting to deleting your entire Facebook profile, a.k.a commiting Facebook suicide, seems downright drastic. I'll admit that I’ve contemplated it before, but the thought of how lonely it might be outside of the Facebook circle has forever kept me from doing it. The Facebook Suicide Hotline also helped to bring me down from the ledge.
For anyone else out there, please don’t jump! There’s still hope out there for you. Here’s a helpful blog about how to use Facebook without it affecting your job search or career.
It’s quite common for people to change their online behaviors to prepare themselves for the real world. According to a 2006 survey by CollegeGrad.com "47 percent of college grad job seekers who use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have either already changed or plan to change the content of their pages as a result of their job search". I, myself, have witnessed this trend first hand.
One of my friends turned his entire Facebook profile into a sudo-resume. He even changed his profile picture to a nice headshot of him in a business suit -- how sweet. Another one of my friends removed all of his online photos. As a Harvard student, he’s on the road to becoming a politician. Maybe he’s afraid that pictures of him doing keg stands in a speedo might come back to haunt him someday...
But no matter how careful you are about your online information, there is always ways for that information to be breached. There is still one sure fire way to keeping your image professional and clean. It involves never breaking any rules or taking obscene pictures. Ah, who am I kidding; I guess I’ll just have to delete my Facebook account...