Family Law and Facebook - The Death of Privacy
By Anthony M. Zezima posted in Family Law on Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Remember your parents’ house, with the wall full of pictures of children, grandchildren, ancestors, and other family and friends? Remember when your sister’s diary was locked and stuffed under her mattress? Well those two memories have come together in today’s society - it’s called Facebook. It will now be a significant factor in all family law matters.
If you use Facebook as a regular method of sharing personal information about your life with family and friends, as well as sharing photos of what is going on in your life, you need to be aware of how this information, put out on the internet, can come back to haunt you. We used to have family gatherings where we gossiped about everyone and shared stories about our exploits and foibles. Now we have Facebook. Do you think that somewhat harmless story you told about drinking and partying all weekend, accompanied by photos of you glassy eyed and downing another beer, will be so funny on Monday when you get called into the office of your supervisor to explain.
What about that offhand remark you made about your best friend’s husband? It was a joke, right? Will that joke somehow come back to haunt him in a future discussion with his employer?
For those of you who think you can keep your Facebook Wall and all of your comments and photos private, simply by clicking “friends” instead of “public”, you need to wake up to today’s world of the death of privacy. Family Law cases involving Facebook are increasing exponentially. Those matters that you thought were private, or long forgotten, are coming back to haunt you in your divorce, custody, visitation, and child support litigation.
If you think that your Facebook page is private, you should know that employers, government agencies, and school officials are now asking for your Facebook password, or that your supervisor be accepted as your “friend” so that they can monitor all of those private entries on your Facebook page. How many of you have “friended” a co-worker, fellow student, supervisor, former spouse, coach, or some other person who may have reason to question your behavior outside of the environment that they see you regularly? Would you let them into your home to see the photos on the wall? Sure. Would you have let them read your diary? I don’t think so.
Social networking can be fun, and it is addictive. What you need to understand is that it can be dangerous. It can put an end to your privacy, and can do so much more harm than that.
Source: Huffington Post “Facebook Passwords Of Applicants Demanded By Colleges, Government Agencies” March 6, 2012
http://www.getadivorceatlanta.com/2012/03/family-law-and-facebook-—the-death-of-privacy.shtml
The article is wrong also on it being FRIENDS or Public as your only choice. you can share info by designating groups individuals public and private.
They asked for my Wife's Facebook password at her work. She told them no. They admitted they had no legal standing to make her give it to them. (its just the FEDGOV trying to intimidate the masses) They also admitted they could not punish her for not giving it to them. And she must have a yearly FBI background check to work there. And in her works case its redundant anyhow being that with The FBI background check they can legally peruse our ISP info transmission using the built in CALEA compliant system if they need it.
Bottomline if you think you can do anything illegal or stupid and you talk about it Be it on Facebook or at the local pub and not suffer consequences (people do tend to talk you know) then you are an idiot.
Common sense takes care of any privacy concerns on Facebook. Its can be summed up simply and it works equally well On or off of Facebook. "Don't share what you are ashamed of."