<p>The worst I have seen on the facebook is my buddy unlinking himself to a picture I posted of him from a couple of years ago where it showed him prematurely balding (before he shaved his head) Other than that, I put nude spring break pictures on my facebook, noone says anything, more than likely because they are buried at the end of the photo album, and few people look at my profile now that I am an alum.</p>
<p>Northstarmom advise is solid and all too correct. Like it or not, you are being evaluated from the other person's perspective not from your viewpoint.</p>
<p>I have read many resumes and conducted many interviews of prospective hires. Any information that was provided in writing, by spoken word or by gesture and/or mannerisms were open to my intrepretation and evaluation.</p>
<p>If you want a scholarship, or an internship or a summer position, or entrance into an MBA/JD/etc graduate program, or are seeking a permenent position, the key words are: YOU WANT!</p>
<p>While you might think that it is your RIGHT to post on your personal website your opinions and ideas and whatever strikes you as funny or relevant or whatever, just remember that later on sometimes YOU WILL WANT some person(s) approval, acceptance, appreciation, etc.</p>
<p>The person or persons that will be making a decision about YOUR FUTURE, is not some evildoer or the noisiest person in the world, they are just doing their task which happens to include selecting you or xyz or abc or a fourth person to get that award, internship, permenent position or entrance into a graduate program.</p>
<p>Any reason that you give someone in that selection position to question giving you that item that YOU WANT is your responsibity (fault).</p>
<p>What some persons are displaying on these facebooks could easily be judged unfavorably for no other reason, then the fact that the other candidates did not post such items on their facebook/my space sites.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with wearing a wig, but if it is orange with pink stripes someone might draw a conclusion about the wearer. A dress is a very appropriate form of attire, but if a 260 lbs male wears it to a job interview, the interviewer is allowed to assess that attire in their evaluation.</p>
<p>IMO, let the other person spill their sense of humor or irony out to the world via facebook, you would be wise to only reveal your sense of humor/irony to your friends and only orally not on the web.</p>
<p>"
And as long as you set your profile to "friends only" and make yourself invisible in searches BEFORE any potential employers would look at your profile, you're fine - they won't even know you have a profile then."</p>
<p>Not true. A friend might turn on you.</p>
<p>I'm saying employers cannot see you in searches. If you have such bad friends that they would copy/paste your profile and actively send it to employers, then you have much bigger problems than not getting a job. It is, assuming you have the most restrictive privacy settings on, IMPOSSIBLE for an employer to see you in a cursory search of Facebook. You are being overly paranoid, in terms of getting any normal job (i.e. not a CEO level position where increased scrutiny will arise), about the possibility of betrayal. It is just as likely that a friend would call up a potential employer and tell them that you're a cracked out H junkie who downs a fifth a day as it is that they would copy/paste your Facebook and send it to said employer.</p>
<p>Also, for the purposes of public office/etc, a second-hand report from a friend is nowhere near as damning as the press actually seeing your profile - it would be tremendously easy to forge a screenshot of someones profile. One could put them in whatever groups they wanted, list whatever interests they wanted, etc. Thus, one could take the standard PR response to such a report - attacking the credibility of the source and denying all allogations.</p>
<p>As long as you play smart, there is minimal risk from being honest on Facebook.</p>
<p>I guess I'm in the minority here. The only site that I feel relatively comfortable posting semi-personal information on is facebook because it restricts the majority of the world from seeing your information. I'm actually curious how adcoms have access to students' facebook (especially in high school) accounts. As far as I know, you can only see the profiles of students that attend your own school. So unless the GC is giving the adcoms access to their school's information, I don't really know the adcoms is getting access. It sounds more like the GC has something up their sleeve?</p>
<p>In terms of Xanga, MySpace, etc. I just feel that people are pretty much asking for any negative consequence. Some of the things people do on those websites are just plain stupid, especially leaving their information completely open to the public.</p>
<p>"As far as I know, you can only see the profiles of students that attend your own school."</p>
<p>I've only peeked at my daughters page on facebook so I don't know all the ins and outs but I know that if one can get on it, one can see and look up anyone that is on it, no matter where they go to school. My daughter has had fun looking up people that she knew in middle school and then lost touch with after we moved - 8 years ago. She also keeps touch with her old HS friends through facebook. That's why people say it's so addictive. You find one friend and they list a circle of friends and then you go to that persons group and so on..</p>
<p>I thought the way it worked was that the college itself registers and then if you have a college e-mail address, you can set up an account. If that's how it works then I don't know how a human relations person could look in facebook without the college e-mail address.</p>
<p>You can search for anyone, but you can't see their profile unless you are "friends" with them - you both have to agree to be "friends" in order to see the profiles. It would be too much of a liability to be able to see everyone's profile. But yes, you can search for people and see their name and what college they go to - that's about it. So it's not true that if you have an account you can see EVERYONE's profile - you just have access to everyone at your school's profile without being "friends" with them. I don't know how it works for high schools, just college.</p>
<p>Ah, I see. I was also speaking of colleges. Inaccurately, I guess. So how would someone hiring people for jobs find out any information from facebook?</p>
<p>That's what I don't know and why I'm confused as to how the OP's GC claims that the adcoms saw her profile...</p>
<p>All you have to have is a face book account. That can be set up if you are an alumni from any college active in the facebook program. You just need an alumni email address to register. Of course if you know someone else's email and password, you can log in and search through their account.</p>
<p>You need a facebook account FROM THE SPECIFIC SCHOOL to see other people's profiles, or you need to be friends with them. You CAN, however, set your profile to be viewable ONLY by friends and not visible in searches, so even if they have an email address from your school and search for you, they will not see that you exist, much less see your profile.</p>
<p>As an example of how doing something "funny" in print when one is in college can come back to haunt you, someone in my college class was in our college yearbook smoking dope. He became a high government official , and during our 25th reunion, the college newspaper reprinted the pix along with his name.</p>
<p>Fortunately for him, I saw no evidence that the story got outside of the college (even though some of the alum are journalists). I do wonder, however, how he explained the pix and story to his kids. I know that he joked to us alum, "I didn't inhale."</p>
<p>College student Michael Guinn thought the photos he posted of himself dressed in drag would be seen only by friends. But he made a mistake. And when someone showed the photos on Facebook to administrators at John Brown University, a Christian college in Siloam Springs, Ark., it was "the last straw for them," says Guinn, 22, who is gay.</p>
<p>Very timely thread</p>
<p>Just to give you an idea, if anyone outside of my high school were to look me up on Facebook, this</a> is what would come up. The only information visible would be my name, high school, and class, along with a small picture (in my case, a generic mugshot). I don't feel uncomfortable with that in the same way that I'd feel uncomfortable using MySpace, where everything is public.</p>
<p>I read an article about this recently where the creators of facebook said it's illegal to use information on facebook hiring decisions and things like that (against terms of service), though I guess there's no way to prove it.</p>
<p>"Just to give you an idea, if anyone outside of my high school were to look me up on Facebook..."</p>
<ol>
<li><p>People from within your high school may show the pages to people whom you don't want to see the pages. After all, people from your high school may have parents, friends and relatives who hire people or make admissions or scholarship decisions. All it takes for the wrong person to see your info is for one of your friends to leave your Facebook open on their computer. </p></li>
<li><p>Not everyone in your high school is your friend.</p></li>
<li><p>Even people from your high school who are your friends may eventually not be friends with you any more and may themselves enter positions of responsibility in which they make hiring and other decisions that may affect you.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There's also the possiblity that things like Face Book records could be subpoenaed or investigated as part of a security search. If you go into the military, you'll need to get a security clearance. If you go to something like a White House reception (and who knows what your future may hold?), you'll need an FBI clearance.</p>
<p>Soccerguy, you are right that Facebook can say that it's illegal to use their info for hiring decisions, etc., but they can not prevent employers from doing this. A person whom I know who lost a job due to such entries has no idea that their online blog was the reason that they were let go. Employers aren't stupid. Some employees are.</p>
<p>From the article that Emeraldkity posted the link to:</p>
<p>" Admissions dean Paul Marthers at Reed College in Portland, Ore., says the school denied admission this year to one applicant in part because his entries on blogging site LiveJournal included disparaging comments about Reed....</p>
<p> In Costa Mesa, Calif., 20 students were suspended last month from TeWinkle Middle School for two days for participating in a MySpace group where one student allegedly threatened to kill another and made anti-Semitic slurs....</p>
<p> A 16-year-old boy in Jefferson, Colo., was arrested after police say he showed pictures of himself on his MySpace page holding handguns.... </p>
<p> Two Louisiana State swimmers were kicked off the team last spring for criticizing their coaches on Facebook. ..."</p>
<p>Northstarmom- Facebook allows you to set security options. You can set it so that even people from your high school can not view your profile unless they are your friends. Also, when you are friends with someone you can unfriend them, so you can have it so that only close friends can view it. You do run the risk of them leaving their facebook open and someone seeing (although they might make you sign back in if you are idle for too long, I'm not sure), but if only friends are seeing it then those friends would have personal information about you anyway. As for your examples of people getting in trouble through sites like this, you shouldn't be doing anything illegal in the first place. So as long as you're a good kid you should be fine.</p>
<p>Chocolatluvr,
I agree with you that if someone has nothing to hide, they should be fine.</p>
<p>As for, " Also, when you are friends with someone you can unfriend them, so you can have it so that only close friends can view it," yes, that's true.</p>
<p>Sometimes, however, one doesn't know when one has ticked off a friend. Also, friends may have saved the info, and after they are "unfriended" may out of revenge show the info to others. </p>
<p>Sometimes, too, people of all ages can be naive about what kind of info may get them into trouble. Things that it might be fine to say to friends may end up causing trouble if on a web site. For instance, the person who was rejected by Reed for saying bad things about it would have been OK if the person had just said those things verbally. </p>
<p>For all we know, the person may have been saying those things because they loved Reed, but feared they'd be rejected, so were trying to soften the rejection that they feared was coming. Students do such things all of the time. Not a big deal as long as the colleges that they applied to don't see their musings.</p>
<p>Y'all are getting away from the OP's issue. It's not that OP had some sort of incriminating photographs or information. Her facebook account said that she was conservative. Why would any school worth going to reject a student based on conservative ideals? What ever happened to academic freedom? At my school, most (no, all) of the professors are liberal, some extremely so. But the students come from across the board. There are radicals and reactionaries, and everyone in between. Schools may hire liberal profs (for reasons that are off topic), but they aren't going to reject a student because he or she isn't liberal!</p>
<p>No, I think the posts are on target. The op said that this wasn't about politics - right? ;)</p>
<p>Students should use some sense when posting - especially regarding information that could be used against them in any way. (That was the point of the OP, I think.) Kids don't alsways realize that political statements can be very inflamatory. Sometimes students make comments that could be considered intolerant of others , which could lead a school to worry about hate crimes or racist attitudes from the poster. Anyone who reads political forums or discussion boards knows how degenerate some of the comments can be- with much name calling from both sides. Kids may pick up on this verbal bashing, which might come accross as dangerous at its worst, to just unsavory at its best. Arrogant, dismissive or provocative material of any kind should be kept off of public forums. This is just common sense - but not all college students have developed that part of their brain. It's a reasonable concern, and parents would be wise to remind their students that the facebook is not a private site.
Kids who are very politically involved probably don't care who knows their political bent, and I think that's a good thing as long as what's posted is respectful and tolerant. Any school that wouldn't admit a student because he or she is either liberal or conservative is not a school that will give that student the education necessary to do well in this very polarized country of ours.
I would never ask my kid to hold back their values or beliefs if they felt they were germaine to the essay or conversation regarding a school's admission, or job, or whatever. When we start asking our kids to censor themselves for fear of political reprisal, what are we really saying about our freedom? On the other hand, it's important to be sensitive and respectful of others, in real life as well as in writing or posting.</p>