Doug Cone of Nullvariable Web Consulting will discuss how to protect your online accounts by going into depth about phishing, security and privacy. Also at the meeting, Russell Tripp of Infusion Web and Videowill do an overview of Google Wave which he went into depth about at the last GreenvilleSMC meeting on December 8th.

Keep an eye out for local technology events from Social Media Club and other local technology related organizations to stay up to date and to socialize with people who use social media!

Geotagging your Tweets

This is certainly an interesting feature, but I find that for the uninformed user, this is incredibly dangerous and they might not even know they should be weary.

Why You Should Be Weary

Sharing information, and finding people near you is great if you have the right intentions but some people out there are wack jobs and others are just smart enough to use the information to rob you. Here is the video explaining this robbery:

This happened WITHOUT geotagging. However, now that geotagging has come along, someone could tell that you are not at home by looking at the location of your tweet, no matter what you are saying. Granted, this is an opt-in service, but people still try the latest and greatest just for a “why not”. Here is a picture of the Twitter settings that allow you to turn on Geotagging:

Notice there is a button to “Delete all location data”.  I don’t remember seeing this before, but I have a feeling if it wasn’t there, it would heavily requested by people who get freaked out about what geotagging really means.

Microsoft’s Bing Maps now supports searching for geotagged tweets in a given area and is quite neat.  I wrote some test code today and ran it on one of the users that came up.  It showed me that they tweeted at what looked like home, and at school, and both of those tweets had timestamps.  With this sort of information, trends about how a person spends their day could be developed, and more robberies like the one mentioned above could happen.

Who would want to use Geotagging for their personal tweets?  Are you worried?

The scary part comes in when you consider what would happen if this information got out. Maybe insurance companies would turn you down because they knew about a previous condition, or someone you didn’t want knowing your medical history would know.

The world is becoming a place where all of our information, and everything we do is getting stored in “the cloud” and it only makes sense that our medical records will be too. But is Google the one that should do this? If not, who should? Would you use Google Health? I’m considering trying it out once I know more. Let us know what you think.

Image Source: Palm Beach Post

Thought you could post your pictures from the party you went to tonight after you got back to your dorm? Sure, but be beware.

Students at the University of Wisconsin – Lacrosse were convicted of Underage Drinking due to pictures posted on Facebook.

As mentioned in our previous article: “If you don’t want your mom to see it, don’t post it.”

I guess the same thing goes for cops too.

For instance, make selected portions of your profile and person information available, but only allow friends to see things such as Posts, Photos, Videos and Tags.

You can find more information on this in this post by InsideFacebook.com.

Larry Johnson, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs was released earlier this month as a free agent after bashing the coaching staff and disrespecting a fan on his Twitter account. This action to release Johnson was strongly encouraged by fans as more than 32,000 signed an online petition for his release from the team.

“If you don’t want your mom to see it, don’t post it online.”

Yes.

Nathalie Blanchard, a woman from Quebec, Canada was recently dropped from her Manulife health coverage for severe depression because of pictures and messages that were posted on Facebook. Nathalie had been diagnosed with severe depression from her psychiatrist and was recommended to go on extended leave. After a year and a half, her coverage stopped and Nathalie phoned the insurance company to see what was happening. She was told that there were pictures of her at the beach, out with friends and there were status messages of her climbing a mountain. Because of this (and possibly other factors that we are unaware of) it was determined that she was no longer depressed.

Natalie is filing in court to get her coverage back and Tom Lavin, Nathalie’s attorney stated:

“I don’t think for judging a mental state that Facebook is a very good tool,”

“My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape.”

Manulife did admit that it uses Facebook, however they responded to the CBC stating:

“We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook.”

Nathalie was employed by IBM and has been asked to go on leave without pay.