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Embarasing stuff on your profile?.....Here's a good fix!

Clean the &$#*)@ Off of Your Social Profiles


There are few things more embarrassing than getting caught with damaging materials on social profiles, particularly by a relative, employer, or competitor. What we posted weeks, months, even years ago can come back to bite us. That’s the nature of social media in many ways – to allow us to expose ourselves. The degree to which we do so, however, is often what gets us in trouble.
Drunk tweeting, getting tagged in Facebook photos doing less-than-appropriate activities, even breaking the law – all are things that have not only caused embarrassment but have also helped get people prosecuted for crimes. Even if you’re not out murdering people, companies are using social media as part of background checks when looking for employees. It’s a dangerous world, indeed, this thing we call “sharing.”
Depending on how active you are in social media, you should probably considering “cleaning” things up. I was recently asked by a friend to help her go through her social media profiles before she went job-hunting. It seemed that most services out there were geared towards businesses finding juice about us rather than us finding our own juice.
One exception was Socioclean. After reviewing it this morning I noticed a few things that impressed me:

Private Screening


People ask why we don’t review many Facebook apps and services. The answer is simple – I don’t want anyone having access to post on my wall. Call me paranoid, but when the Facebook or Twitter permissions screens pop up, they almost always grant permission to post. Socioclean passed my first test – get info (which I don’t mind giving) and don’t post anything on my behalf.
Upon further examination, the site “feels” secure. I have our Mr. Paranoid investigating further but for now, all is well.
Perhaps most importantly, it only scans what is accessible by the public. Private messages are excluded from the search.

Paranoia FTW!


The search screen prompted me for keywords. At first, I thought, “Oh great. I have to think about this?”
Instead of entering keywords, I let it run on default. Above, you’ll see part of the initial report I received. Keywords that were flagged without my prompting were fire, balls, and kill. Yes, I can see how those words, when used inappropriately, could be a problem:
“If my boss thinks he can fire me, he has another thing coming. Tomorrow, I’ll chop off his balls and kill him.”
Thankfully, I didn’t use the words in that order or context.

Photo Tagging – The Hidden Killer


Sometimes, it isn’t necessarily what you say but rather what others say about you.
So, you’re out on the town and one of your girlfriends snaps a shot of you doing a drunken table dance. She puts it on Facebook and tags you in it. Either you don’t monitor Facebook enough or you’re just so active that the photo makes it onto your profile page and off too quickly for you to see. Either way, it’s not a good thing when a student in the 3rd-grade class that you teach finds it.
In the example above, words like BJ, ho, and blunt were found in images associated with me. Thankfully (again) they did not point to pictures that put me in a bad light, but I’m thankful for being able to monitor those.

Clean the &$#*)@ Off Once a _____


Fill in the blank. Once a year? Once a week? It all depends on how active you are and what you do. Definitely do it before searching for a job or shortly after getting arrested.

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