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By Neptune Moon, August 12, 2011 5:36 pm

So I just saw a tweet from Avinash Kaushik about three settings you will want to change in LinkedIn to keep your profile information from being shared with third party sites. I am pretty big on privacy and controlling access to my various online profiles, so I was surprised to read about this and took action right away!

Item One: Social Advertising

According to LinkedIn’s own preferences box:

LinkedIn may sometimes pair an advertiser’s message with social content from LinkedIn’s network in order to make the ad more relevant. When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you. Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.

What does it mean? It means that advertisers could use your profile information alongside their ads if you have interacted with them in some way. Just because I follow someone or a company, does not mean I endorse them.

How to turn it off: The default is that you are opted in to this. To opt out, go to your Settings Tab > Accounts >Manage Social Advertising and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.”

Item Two: Data Sharing with Third Party Applications

What does it mean? It means that you are giving LinkedIn permission to share your profile data with undisclosed third party applications.

How to tun it off: To change this setting, go to your Settings Tab > Groups, Companies & Applications > Data sharing with third-party applications and uncheck the box that says “Yes, share my data with third party applications.”

Item Three: Partner InMail

According to LinkedIn’s own preference box:

LinkedIn Partner InMails are messages from our partners with informational or promotional content that is part of a marketing or hiring campaign. These Partner InMails are sent to LinkedIn users based on non-personal information, such as the title of your current position, your primary industry, or your region, and are not from individual recruiters using LinkedIn. Your name and e-mail address will not be disclosed to LinkedIn’s marketing partners.

What does it mean? It means that you are agreeing to allow LinkedIn’s marketing partners to send you unsolicited emails.

How to turn it off: To change this setting, got to your Settings Tab > Email > Turn On/Off Partner InMail and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn’s marketing partners may send you informational and promotional messages.” and uncheck the box that says “LinkedIn’s hiring campaign partners may send you informational and promotional messages.”

The problem isn’t necessarily that LinkedIn wants to start making itself more social – which it clearly does. The problem is, it automatically opts users in, without any notice. Have they not learned anything from Facebook and their privacy outcries after making similar changes to their network? I realize that the point of being on a network like LinkedIn or Facebook is to share information and I am all for that. But, I am also for utter transparency in what is being shared and for having control over what parts of my profiles are shared and with whom. I don’t think I’m alone in this!

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By Neptune Moon, July 8, 2011 10:46 am

How do you feel about making purchases directly through Facebook? Are you concerned about the privacy and security of these transactions? If you are, you’re not alone.

According to a survey conducted from May 20 – June 1 of this year by NY advertising agency JWT, people of all generations are concerned about the safety and privacy of ecommerce happening directly through Facebook. Nearly three quarters of the adults surveyed (1,000 total) felt that Facebook was not currently secure enough for them to feel comfortable making purchases. The concerns were pretty consistent across generations, which you may find surprising. We all tend to assume that Millennials (currently 20 – 33 years old) are completely comfortable doing and sharing everything online. Not so according to this survey – it is Millennials who worry most about privacy. I found that surprising.

I am not quite sure that we are at the nexxus of online social activities and ecommerce. Facebook seems to have had too many privacy issues for most people to feel completely comfortable entering their credit card information into their system. It seems that most people, of all generations surveyed (Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers) do enjoy browsing for products during their Facebook and social media time online. How will these attitudes change over time? A lot depends on how Facebook and now Google+ evolve.

You can read more about the survey results at ClickZ.

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By Neptune Moon, June 28, 2011 2:19 pm

With technology advancing at what often feels like warp speed, it is easy to forget that on the other side of any type of communication is still a human being. We have so many opportunities to instantly express our thoughts and opinions and so many outlets to post to, I think we may have lost sight of why we engage in the first place – to communicate.

So much of our business communication is decidedly one-sided and often, a little ego-centric. Think about it – how do you communicate most often with prospective clients or customers? Email? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? A blog? There has been a lot of talk in the past couple of years about how push marketing is dead and it is now all about engagement. While I agree that engagement media (think Twitter and Facebook) have certainly risen in popularity and sophistication, there is still plenty of room in your marketing mix for good old-fashioned push marketing (think Email or blogs).

Whatever channel you choose to communicate with your customers, make sure that you are always putting THEM first. It is so easy to forget this simple philosophy and just bombard people with messages that are all about you and not all that interesting to them! I often suggest to clients that they think about their own behavior when we are discussing a new marketing concept or delivery method. Granted, your target market may be very different from your client and those differences are important to recognize, but there are certain types of behavior that are pretty universally annoying.

Are you guilty of any of these?

1. Obnoxious Frequency. Sending the same email blast out every other day for two weeks because your open rates are low. Tweeting about every little thought that comes into your head all day long.
2. The Hard Sell. Are all of your communications all about how wonderful your company or product is?
3. Not Listening. Do you ever reply to people who do try to engage with you or do you leave them hanging?
4. Being Intrusive. Social media can be tricky – just because you or your company was mentioned, does not always mean you need to jump in to a conversation.
5. Not Asking for Permission. Do you add people to your email list, or worse text message list, without asking? Do you get permission for one thing and then automatically sign them up for everything else?
6. Abusing Trust. Do you share email addresses with other companies?
7. Not Taking No for an Answer. Do you make it easy for people to disengage with you if they so desire?

Engaging in great communication starts with you and it is easier than you might think. How can you avoid being guilty of the above offenses?

1. Take a hard look at your email content and/or your email list segmentation. If you have low open rates, ask yourself why. Perhaps your information is not all that interesting or useful. Make it better!
2. Ease up on the blatant sales language. Start to build a reputation as a connector of people or a source of useful and topical information.
3. Build social media listening into your social media strategy – spend time reading what others are writing and when appropriate, join the conversation.
4. Use some restraint and avoid being creepy! Just because you or your company were mentioned in a post does not automatically mean it is appropriate or welcome for you to directly engage and jump into someone else’s conversation.
5. Follow sound opt-in procedures and be clear about your policies when someone is signing up to receive communication from you.
6. Treat your email list, followers and connections like gold – because they are! If you’re not sure about a particular behavior, you probably shouldn’t do it.
7. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe and if you do step over the line in the social space, apologize quickly and sincerely and then go away.

If we all take a moment to think about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes, our communications can’t help but be better!

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By Neptune Moon, January 27, 2011 11:33 am

Facebook is in the news again this week with the announcement of its new “Sponsored Stories” ad product. This on the heels of the rollout and subsequent rollback of granting applications access to users’ home addresses and cell phone numbers. So, what is this latest “feature” and how might it impact you and your Facebook habits?

In a nutshell, this new feature would take various actions, such as Liking, posting a comment on a fan page or checking in and turn them into ads. The program is being piloted with a small set of advertisers, but Facebook has made it clear that this “service” will be available to any company in the future. What does this mean, in real terms, for you, the user? Say you’re at your local Starbucks and you check in. With this new feature, Starbucks could take your check in and create an ad that would appear in your friends feed, with your name and profile photo beside it. You don’t opt-in to this and you can’t opt-out. There are no parameters for how often a company could use your actions or for how long.

Facebook’s attitude seems to be that they are only highlighting information that you chose to share anyway. Which, in a way is true. But, they also fail to see the nuance here, as they seem to do so often when it comes to users’ data and posts. Me, taking an action, such as Liking a company has historically shown up on my profile page and in my friends’ news feeds as a single line – Julie Friedman Bacchini likes Company X, for example. I’m ok with that, I chose to Like Company X. By Liking them though, am I giving them  permission to use me in an ad for Company X as an endorser? I don’t think so, and at a minimum, I should have a choice about that usage of my name.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out…

You can read more about this on:

• CNET
• CNN/Money
• Mashable (Editorial)
• AdAge
• Facebook (announcement video)

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By Neptune Moon, January 18, 2011 11:03 am

It is getting a little tedious writing about Facebook and its seemingly continual issues with protecting user data. The latest privacy issue to arise with Facebook is the news that the social networking giant this week, began allowing applications to have access to your physical address and your cell phone number. Just take a moment and let that sink in… Like with any application, you must grant it permission to access this information, but most users don’t understand what they are agreeing to when they grant an application access to their profile information. You do have the option to not allow access to this information, but the default is, if you grant an app access to your profile, it will have access to this information.

After a ton of coverage and serious concerns about user privacy, Facebook announced on Monday that they will temporarily suspend this service until the can “fine tune the way it works”.

I’m not sure why Facebook continues to move in this direction? Maybe they figure they’ve got enough users and enough marketshare that even if they are cavalier with users’ data people will complain, but won’t actually stop using their service. That seems shortsighted to me, but I suppose only time will tell.

What can you do if you don’t want apps to have access to this information? You could disallow access to this information when you grant an app access to your profile. Or, you could simply remove your address and cell phone information from your Facebook account all together. There is no reason for Facebook to have either piece of information, in my opinion. I’ve already commented on posting your birthday, as it is one of the key personal identifiers used to authenticate individuals. What do they ask you when you call your doctor’s office right after your name – date of birth.

Read the full story at about the program suspension at CNN.com. You can read more about the specifics of the new app permissions, in their previous form, at The Atlantic.

We will continue to follow this issue.

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By Neptune Moon, December 21, 2010 10:16 am

Great coverage, as usual, in the Wall Street Journal about your smartphone apps sending information “back to the mothership” without users’ knowledge or consent. It turns out that many apps on the popular iPhone and Andriod systems have been sending all kinds of information back to the apps’ creators and/or third party marketing companies – all without user consent.

Among the items often sent – your unique phone ID and your current geographic location. Creepy stuff! This topic brings up a lot of really interesting questions about where the line is when it comes to online tracking. I’ve often said “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” when it comes to design and marketing. Trust is still an incredibly important part of any transaction or relationship. Passing personally identifiable information, without consent, is a big deal. Add to that the fact that is a lot harder, and in fact sometimes impossible, to control this access on a mobile device and you’ve got a whole lot of people who are being tracked in one way or another who have no idea it is even happening. That can’t be a good thing.

The Mobile Marketing Association is working on “comprehensive set of mobile privacy guidelines” in response to these recent revelations.

Read the full coverage at the WSJ.

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By Neptune Moon, October 18, 2010 3:09 pm

Not to pile it on Facebook – I know it has been a topic of a lot of my posts, but when news of privacy issues breaks, it just isn’t something I can ignore. Especially knowing how many people use Facebook and how few actually understand how it really works.

I’m not opposed to Facebook, in fact, I find it quite useful to keep up with friends and family who live in different time zones! But I do believe that I, and all users, should be in complete control of the information we decide to post on the site. I am of the belief that whatever you decide to post online, you should inherently understand that you have a lesser “expectation of privacy” (to borrow a Law & Order term!) than you would, say having a face to face conversation with someone. I think we all accept that in exchange for the connectivity these types of programs offer us.

But, when things are happening behind the scenes, without our knowledge or opt-in consent that shares or potentially compromises our information, that is where I think the line must be drawn.

So what’s this week’s issue? Apparently, many of the uber popular apps in Facebook have been capturing personally identifiable information or users and sometimes of their friends and storing it and/or providing it to third party companies. As usual, the Wall Street Journal has a fantastic article on the topic today:

“Apps” are pieces of software that let Facebook’s 500 million users play games or share common interests with one another. The Journal found that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies.

The apps, ranked by research company Inside Network Inc. (based on monthly users), include Zynga Game Network Inc.’s FarmVille, with 59 million users, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, also have been transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.

Read the full article here.

To Facebook’s credit, they are taking this revelation very seriously and seem to be making moves to curtail the practice and disable apps that violate Facebook’s privacy terms. In the meantime, now, as always, be thoughtful about what you post online, even if you have your privacy settings set at the highest level. It is ultimately up to you to manage what is even available to a site like Facebook.

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By Neptune Moon, October 13, 2010 11:07 am

The Wall Street Journal has a fantastic series all about this topic – it is definitely worth the read.

The article that originally caught my eye was addressing the topic of data scraping and its pervasiveness. Most of us think that only some of what we might post online is vulnerable to being captured and attributed to us, right? Not so fast! We all know that Google has tons of information in its database about what we search for, and most of us don’t give it a second thought. We also all know that if you create an account with a web site, that company has your particulars.

But what about the stuff you post on a site behind a login, such as Facebook – that is private, right? You have complete control over who can see your postings through the site’s privacy settings… or do you? I’m not just picking on Facebook here, the data scraping is happening over the entire web. I’m using Facebook as an example because it is so widely used. Companies often engage services that help them to find information online about prospective employees, including “private” posts. The WSJ article highlighted a particular case where a marketing company was scraping a private patient discussion board.

Pretty unnerving stuff. I guess the old adage “never put anything into writing you wouldn’t want to have to admit to later” now goes a step further. Don’t post anything online that you don’t want to have to answer for later. To their credit, most web sites are actively mounting defenses against this type of scraping, but much like viruses, it is a constant game of catch up and innovation.

So what’s the bottom line? Most of us know that when we post something online, even if the site is “private” or password protected that there is always some risk of the data being accessed by unauthorized persons. In exchange for easy communication we have ceded some ground on the privacy front – it is a deal we are generally willing to make these days. But it is certainly worth thinking about…

Managing your online data and your online reputation gets more complicated by the day!

Access the WSJ section here.

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By Neptune Moon, August 19, 2010 5:15 pm

Facebook unveiled its new Places feature today. What does this feature do? Why should you care? How can you adjust your account settings?

What does this feature do?

Facebook Places is a geolocation or location-based functionality where you can “check in” via Facebook and let your friends (or the world) know where you are at any given moment. The functionality currently works with iPhones and can also be accessed with other smartphones via the web. Android and BlackBerry support is said to be coming soon.

Why should you care?

Not everyone wants others to literally know where they are – with GPS precision. There are the obvious safety issues to consider and it is probably not a great idea to tell the world you’re on vacation and exactly where – nothing like pointing a neon sign to your empty house! The feature is automatically enabled in your account, but if you don’t actively check in, your location probably won’t appear on your profile or in anyone else’s feed.

If you don’t want your location shared, ever, you should update your account’s privacy settings so that others cannot check you in.

How can you adjust your account settings to completely opt out?

Go to Accounts and choose Privacy Settings. In the list of settings you control, you’ll see a new one called Places I Check In. Click on the Customize Setting option. When you get to the next screen, in the Things I Share area you will see a choice for Places I Check In – choose the level of privacy you want. If you don’t want your location to ever be shown, choose Only Me from the options.

To make sure no one else can check you in either, you’ll need to change another setting. In the Things Others Share section, scroll down to the Friends Can Check Me In to Places option and disable it.

How much information you want to share about your real time, actual location is an individual choice. Just make sure you know how your settings are configured so that information you do not want to be shared remains private.

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By Neptune Moon, May 24, 2010 5:29 pm

Just a quick update on the Facebook privacy post from last week… Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an Op-Ed for The Washington Post, directly addressing users’ legitimate privacy concerns.

According to Zuckerberg: new, simpler privacy controls are in the works, along with ways to easily turn off of any third party services.

Read it at the Washington Post now.