One-Word Comment Cost a School Employee His Job . . . But Wait, There’s More
by Lane on November 18, 2009
Read Write Web just posted this interesting (and frightening) story. Here’s the gist of what went down:
A vulgar comment was made by a reader of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s website on Friday on an article about the strangest things you’ve ever eaten. The headline was practically asking for a juvenile response and, thanks to the anonymity of the internet, that’s exactly what happened. In the comments section of the article, one user posted a single word response referring to a part of a woman’s anatomy.
Get the full scoop about how the school employee was uncovered based on his IP address and a representative of STL Today informed the school – see Read Write Web’s post.
Revealing the commenter’s identity to a third party, including the school, is a express violation of the site’s privacy policy.
Privacy policies are, for many industries, voluntary. STL Today cooked its own, voluntary privacy policy and agreed not to disclose personal info to third parties:
We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. In some cases, however, we may provide information to legal officials as described in “Compliance with Legal Process” below.
(emphasis added)
If you read the “Compliance with Legal Process” section, you’ll see that there has to be a reason to release information other than just tattling on someone leaving a naughty comment.
The FTC can set huge fines for violations of privacy policies – even if they are voluntarily implemented. Additionally, the commenter may have contractual claims against STL Today for the damages caused (*a lost job) by its employee’s circumvention of the privacy policy.
I’ll bet we’ve not heard the end of this one.
Still yet, this is a scary reminder that just because a site has a privacy policy or terms of service in place where it promises not to reveal your information to third parties doesn’t always mean the site or its representatives will abide by it’s own rules. Even though you may be in the right at the end of the day, that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences to suffer in the interim.
One-Word Comment Cost a School Employee His Job . . . But Wait, There’s More
by Lane on November 18, 2009
Read Write Web just posted this interesting (and frightening) story. Here’s the gist of what went down:
Get the full scoop about how the school employee was uncovered based on his IP address and a representative of STL Today informed the school – see Read Write Web’s post.
Revealing the commenter’s identity to a third party, including the school, is a express violation of the site’s privacy policy.
Read it here: http://www.stltoday.com/help/privacy-policy
Privacy policies are, for many industries, voluntary. STL Today cooked its own, voluntary privacy policy and agreed not to disclose personal info to third parties:
(emphasis added)
If you read the “Compliance with Legal Process” section, you’ll see that there has to be a reason to release information other than just tattling on someone leaving a naughty comment.
The FTC can set huge fines for violations of privacy policies – even if they are voluntarily implemented. Additionally, the commenter may have contractual claims against STL Today for the damages caused (*a lost job) by its employee’s circumvention of the privacy policy.
I’ll bet we’ve not heard the end of this one.
Still yet, this is a scary reminder that just because a site has a privacy policy or terms of service in place where it promises not to reveal your information to third parties doesn’t always mean the site or its representatives will abide by it’s own rules. Even though you may be in the right at the end of the day, that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences to suffer in the interim.