Stalker on the network

Anyone who uses the Internet can be subjected to Cyberstalking. The use of information technology, particularly the Internet, to harass another person has become common especially with the growth of social media and networking sites. People protect themselves on the street and they are always aware of strangers, but they hardly think about how easy it is for people to come into their homes through the Internet. Although, some people may think it is fun to post photos and information and status updates on sites such Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace they often forget about the hundreds or thousands of people who see or could potentially see that information.

Imagine it’s late on a Saturday night and you cannot fall asleep so you decide to sit down at your computer and check your Facebook messages. “Papa,” your new friend, wants to know if you can chat. You log onto the AIM facility on Facebook, and talk about everything from politics to which foods you like. You think you’ve made a new friend but you know nothing about “Papa,” but he knows a lot about you.

Cyberstalkers may use networking websites to contact their victims, or simply identify targets and plan the best way to stalk them. Cyberstalking can cross-over to physical stalking and in extreme cases be a prelude to more serious behaviour, including physical violence.

The stalking may begin online and then move into the physical realms where the cyberstalker will use the person’s information to follow them around. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter encourage their users to keep updated information about their daily activities on the sites. In the mist of all this information sharing, social media and networking users tend to forget that one of their contacts or friend’s friend can stalk them. With the ability of creating a false identity and personality presented by the internet, one can never know who they are really communicating with on these networking sites. There are over a million social networking accounts on the web and it is really difficult to determine who is really genuinely socialising with you without any hidden agendas unless if you physically know the person.

There are various forms of cyberstalking and these involve the spreading of false accusations in order to damage reputations over the internet, encouraging harassment of other social networking users and false victimization. A good example of a non common mode of cyberstalking was when “Boxxy” a teenage girl with a webcam, a YouTube account and a tendency to spout hyperactive nonsense at an astonishing rate was victimised and harassed by other online users.

Boxxy created a YouTube video which managed to make its way to another social networking site where members of that site began anti Boxxy factions because of the content of the video. She began to get threatened and harassed over the web and she was ordered not to produce anymore online videos.

WiredSafety.org, a website dedicated to online safety, lists some characteristics that predators look for when searching for their next online victim and these include emotional instability and weakness. People who are new or unfamiliar with the internet or a specific social site are more likely to be victims of cyberstalking. According to the website about 83 percent of cyberstalking victims are women. So the question is, how then can one protect themselves from being cyberstalked?

Tips against cyberstalking

* Don’t exchange emails and photographs of yourself with people you’ve never met

* Don’t assume that the person you meet online is who they say they are, digital identities are malleable

* Never open unknown attachments from strangers, and use up-to-date anti-virus software

* And if you want to meet someone you know from online, take a friend along.

Doing business via social media

Imagine phoning Telkom customer service and they put you on hold for 30 minutes, you eventually get impatient and you drop the phone and log onto to Twitter. You send a Twit about how long you have been placed on hold and how inefficient you think Telkom customer service is. Within a space of an hour, over 50 people respond to your Twit and also express the same sentiments about Telkom.

Before the end of the day, the Telkom public relations team meets to discuss their reputation and public perception and decide to give a public apology about their customer service department. This might sound fictional and farfetched but this is not far from reality at all. Social media platforms are both negatively and positively affecting the way companies operate. On the one hand social media is helping companies trace consumer traits and behaviour whilst on the other hand consumers are using the social media platforms to express their dissatisfaction with most company’s service delivery.

Until a handful of years ago, businesses reached customers and the world with advertising, press releases and letters. Consumers, meanwhile, would take their gripes, questions and compliments to the coffee shop or perhaps the customer hotline.

Social media as marketing tools

All this has been changed by the World Wide Web’s ability to enable customers to research products and services, and then through the explosion of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter which can enable them to voice their opinions about products. Most businesses appreciate customer feedback, and social media has proved that it has the potential to transmit information at a fast rate thus making the feedback loop so much efficient because the company will get information in time to react upon it.

Even though this can be seen as a much better two-way communication channel, companies are also taking advantage of the ability to monitor their customer’s social media dialogue. Because of the increased consumer-to-consumer communication going on the social media platforms it is important for brands to be always be at their pick and to know what their customers are thinking about.

Platform convergence

In an industry first Warner Bros Home Video announced a plan to sync up “friend” networks on Facebook with the interactive community-screening features of Warners’ Blu-ray Disc releases, starting with the release of “Watchmen Director’s Cut.” This convergence venture between Facebook and Warner will add to BD-Live’s current community based features that allow users to discuss a movie while viewing it through an online buddy list. This deal however, goes a step further and allows the users to watch a movie in High Definition and in the comfort of their lounges whilst chatting to distant friends.

“We want to do this partnership with Facebook because research has shown that consumers want to have social networking capabilities with BD-Live. Previously, those possibilities had been limited to one’s friends within BD-Live and the general BD-Live community,” said a Warner Bros spokesman.

Such advancements in the corporate world have shown that organisations are taking a keen interest in the behaviour of their customers who are on social networks. If a business can tap into the discussions about their products then they can be at a great advantage because that way they can always meet the ever changing customer needs.

How to use social media to enhance business performance

1. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
2. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
3. Encourage customers to participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
4. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
5. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
6. Experiment with Flickr or YouTube groups to build media for specific events.
7. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
8. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business.
9. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.

10. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn firsthand what it feels like,including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.

Terms and Conditions apply

Online social networking is one of the most efficient modes of communicating with distant friends, but this form of communication also comes with its own challenges. One of the biggest challenges that come with online social networking is the introduction of third parties to one’s conversation or exhibitions. Yes, social networking sites provide an opportunity for distant friends to link up and catch up on each other’s lives. But the big question is, who else is listening in on these stories, who else knows what colour you like or what type of car you have just bought.

Globally, a lot of people now rely on social networks as their means of communication, and by thus doing; they give away a lot of personal data to these networking site’s hosts. Most of the time people just want to get onto the site so fast, that they do not have time to check what the terms and conditions are, all they do is just click the accept button and continue with the registration. After all most of the terms and conditions pages on these sites are very long tedious to read.

Okay, now that one has given away their personal information to these networking sites, the question still remains as to where that information goes and who has access to it. Most social networking sites clearly elucidate in their privacy policy’s what exactly the owners of the site can and cannot use when it comes to user information. But the majority of these social networking sites rope in a lot of Application service providers who come on board to make the sites more interesting and appealing. These third party applications providers have their own privacy policies and terms for how they use the information you’ve chosen to share with them. Bebo, a popular networking site in Europe clearly highlights in their privacy policy that they have no jurisdiction over the use of their user’s personal information by third party application providers.

One has to bare in mind that the internet also acts a market place where information is the commodity on demand. Advertisers are the biggest buyers of information on the internet and they are willing to buy any information one can give them about a potential clients or customers.  Technologies such a “deep-packet inspection” have raised concerns over issues of privacy and consumer online profiling. Most social networks and websites allow advertisers use these technologies to collect information and monitor browsing patterns and online activities of social network users .

With online consumer profiling being such a profitable venture, Facebook, the biggest social networking site on the web at the moment, faced an uproar from its users over proposed changes in their terms and conditions and privacy policies. Facebook wanted to adopt terms and conditions that could allow the social networking site the ability to use content of users even after the information had been deleted from the users account. The question to ask is why would they be interested in that information and for what purpose do they need the information for.

But not all networking sites are trying to sell their users information, some social networking sites give users the chance to manage and protect their information on the site. But yet again some sites can allow you to protect your on information but they can inturn collect information about you from other users on the same service. Facebook, for instance allows other people to tag photographs of people thus reducing ones autonomy of controlling their personal information.

So where is the catch? Although, most of these social networking sites are free, subscribers are in fact are paying for the services provided by the networks with their personal data. Thus the question still remains who has my information and what are they doing with it.