Privacy & The Risks of Visibility

True story: a woman in New York tried to sue the manufacturer and distributor of an allegedly defective office chair after she fell out of the chair, claiming "serious permanent personal injuries." She alleged, among other things, that she had "pain and progressive deterioration with consequential loss of enjoyment of life."


Lawyers for the chair company were naturally suspicious because a recent photo of the Plaintiff on the internet showed her smiling and standing, without apparent assistance, instead of living the pain-filled existence she was asserting in her lawsuit. (She claimed she was confined largely to her bed and house.) Seems like she also took a recent trip to the Sunshine State, and appeared to be generally enjoying life. So then, where did the lawyers dredge up this seemingly damning evidence? Private investigators? GPS satellite photos? CSI? No. Where else? Facebook.

With good reason, lawyers for the chair company trying to determine if the case had any merit and if the injuries sustained were as severe as the plaintiff made them out to be, had trolled the internet. Finding evidence on Facebook (D’oh!) that the claim may not have as much merit as initially asserted, the chair company pressed a local NY judge to allow the company more access into the woman’s social media sites(!), Facebook and MySpace.

Essentially, the judge - Acting Justice Jeffrey Spinner of Suffolk County Supreme Court - told the plaintiff that she must allow the chair company access to her social media sites since “in light of the fact that the public portions of Plaintiff's social networking sites contain material that is contrary to her claims and deposition testimony, there is a reasonable likelihood that the private portions of her sites may contain further evidence….all of which are material and relevant to the defense of this action." Again, since someone posted something online contrary to their best interests, notwithstanding whatever privacy settings she thought she had on the sites, she now has practically incriminated herself.

Social media has really become the third rail of identity in the last 5 years. We have our professional online identities (and even places to post pictures of us in suits and ties – LinkedIn, Plaxo), our online personal identities (Friendster), and now the two big ones, Facebook and Twitter, that ever increasingly blur the line between personal and professional lives. Look at how sales people create Facebook pages, for example. The really good ones make it hard to differentiate who their friends are and who their customers are. Either way, they make it very convenient for other people to find them with lots of freely disclosed information.

Back in the old days, when you wanted publically available information on someone, you had to take laborious steps such as going to a county courthouse, or some other house of public records and spending the day looking up details in big, dusty official books. Each individual had to be investigated one by one. However, today, the internet, and specifically social media sites have now become the new public record. Instantly someone can search for info about you, not only across most public databases, but across other sites that you have voluntarily input data to be collated and analyzed, usually to your detriment.

Think about how human resource departments typically work. They get a hundred resumes for one job opening. In theory, they are looking for the right person; in reality, they are looking to weed out the wrong people. Though they could not admit it, they use social media tools and Google searches to build or justify a hunch, prejudice or bias against you as a candidate. It makes sense from their perspective. You cannot really blame them; it is just their way of doing a risk assessment on an unknown risk, you.