Tag Archives: Twitter

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The Risks of Social Media: How Third Party Marketers Can Pose a Liability

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As social media becomes more important to brands, companies have learned to embrace the marketing tool as a necessity. But many organizations don’t have the time it takes to build an audience of followers on Facebook and Twitter. This is where third party marketing agencies come in. But, as evidenced in recent legal headlines, the liability is enormous.

A recent piece in the International Business Times cited the case of a nonprofit organization that used a third party marketing agency to establish and maintain the nonprofit’s social media presence. But when the nonprofit was late on one payment to the agency, it found that the passwords to the nonprofit’s Facebook and Twitter account had been changed. It was a simple message: if you don’t pay up, you lose your account. And there are several examples of third party marketing agencies not complying with laws and regulations regarding advertising.

A white paper on the inherent legal risks associated with marketing through social media, published by Venable LLP, a New York-based corporate law firm, states:

Companies that have relationships with third-party affiliate marketers should ensure that those affiliates comply with advertising and marketing laws in marketing the companies’ products or services through social media. Businesses should have agreements with affiliates requiring the affiliates to comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations; it may be prudent to include specific representations and warranties by the affiliate with respect to compliance, with specific references to significant laws such as the FTC Act. The agreements should also have a provision whereby the affiliate agrees to indemnify the company (either though a mutual indemnification or otherwise) from liability arising out of the affiliate’s conduct – preferably with a provision requiring that the affiliate carry sufficient insurance to fund the indemnification should it be triggered.

On a related note, confidentiality provisions and related provisions ensuring data security have become increasingly important in the current legal environment, particularly in agreements involving cross-border activities where consumer personal information is collected online. Additionally, businesses should, to the extent it is feasible, monitor the advertising and marketing practices of affiliates and review their marketing materials before they are disseminated. A company should take similar measures with respect to third parties who market through social media outlets operated by the company.

But socia media marketing risks are found in-house, too. Take the case of blogger Noah Kravitz and tech blog PhoneDog. When Kravitz began work at PhoneDog, he created a Twitter handle, @Phonedog_Noah, which eventually amassed 17,000 followers. Kravitz left PhoneDog on good terms in 2010, changing his handle to @NoahKravitz but keeping the password and, hence, his followers.

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Things turned ugly when he filed suit over back pay. PhoneDog then countersued, claiming the followers of @Phonedog_Noah make up, essentially, a corporate customer list — their corporate customer list. In a remarkable move, they also demanded $2.50 for each of the followers over an eight-month period, which adds up to $340,000.

The PhoneDog vs. Kravitz case ended in negotiation in early December. So, without a legal ruling on this modern matter, we are still left with the question of who actually owns certain Twitter accounts? That’s a question we will undoubtedly see more of in the future.

But for now, during this legla limbo of social media laws, there is a large amount of helpful information on the web that companies can use to analyze social media marketing and create their own social media policy, such as SocialMediaGovernance.com, which offers a section with 218 different social media policies. And this site lists six steps to creating a social media governance board. But the most important things to remember when putting your company’s social media marketing efforts in the hands of someone else, either in-house or outsourced, are:

  1. Will the third party/employee do a better job than your staff/yourself?
  2. Does the outsourcing company/employee understand your brand completely?
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  3. Do you have a thorough and specific contract in place?

And please, feel free to share your thoughts. Does your company use third party social media marketing or do you keep this aspect of operations in-house? What are the risks your company has faced with either option?

The Risks of Social Media: Spam Attacks Q&A

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In mid-November, Facebook became the target of spam attack that infiltrated user’s profile pages on which it posted disturbing images. The attack caused an uproar due to the nature of the violent and sexually explicit images. Facebook chalked it up to a “security bug in an internet browser.” But this was not the first (or, most likely, last) spam attack on the social media site.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the Facebook community forum was flooded with spam messages that advertised links for streaming sporting events. And just today it was announced that a new worm spreading on Facebook is aiming to infect users with a data-stealing virus. Though not considered a spam attack, it is just another example of the risks of social media.

With questions on this topic, I turned to Dr. Hongwen Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Wedge Networks.

Facebook has been the target for several recent aggressive spam attacks. What makes the site so popular for spammers?

Spammers are moving their efforts away from email and towards social media, exploiting the ability to create fake profiles for free while quickly gaining a massive online presence across various platforms such as Facebook. In addition, hackers/spammers are capitalizing on the popularity of social media by manipulating end-users into downloading malicious content or browsing malicious sites. Studies conducted by security vendor Kaspersky Labs, show that social networking sites are 10 times more effective at delivering malware than previous methods of email delivery. This is a result of social media sites, such as Facebook, where development is based on human relationships and the ability to quickly and easily connect, creating a perfect breeding ground for malicious code and spam.

What were the implications of the recent Facebook spam attack?

With such a large online community, the increasing amount of spam and malware affects Facebook’s operations as well as their users. While the most recent spam attack isn’t new, the violent and pornographic nature of November’s attack upset users more than usual, who went to their blogs, Twitter or Facebook accounts to discuss the outbreak. As of October of this year, Facebook said that spam represents less than 4% of content shared on the social networking website and affects under 0.5%, or 4 million users, on any given day. This is still a large number of people who are being affected on a daily basis and I suspect that this number only includes spam that Facebook catches, therefore it’s not 100% accurate.

Have there been any recent spam attacks on other social networking sites, such as Twitter or LinkedIn?

Twitter and LinkedIn both have faced similar attacks as Facebook, although we have not seen any published information on these attacks as large of a scale or as organized as what we saw in November with Facebook’s stream of spam messages on user profiles and on their help forum. However, most social media sites follow the same principles of user-generated content on trustworthy sites and as such, hackers and spammers can quickly and easily publish their attacks on all sites and expect a similar effect. For example, there have been many documented cases of spam and malware on multiple sites at once, such as the Starbucks themed attack that used both Facebook and Twitter concurrently in November. According to Sophos, spamming on social networks rose in 2010, with 67% of people surveyed receiving spam messages, up from 57% at the end of 2009 and 33% in the middle of that year. Phishing and malware incidents were also rife, with 43% of users spotting phishing attempts and 40% receiving malware.

How can these spam attacks affect businesses who use social media for marketing purposes?

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have entered the IT security landscape — bringing both advantages and dangers to your business. Organizations continue to utilize social media services for marketing and its employees utilize social media for personal usage. IT departments must balance use with control in order to protect a business in the social media world. It becomes a two-fold job:

1. Stopping Outbound Malicious Spam:
Proactively controlling outbound content mitigates the risk of disclosure, ensures appropriate information is being sent and stops the network from sending out spam or malware from your organization. Organizations need to take measures to ensure that its corporate accounts are safe. This includes limiting passwords, staying up-to-date on industry trends and providing education to staff that are managing social media accounts on behalf of the organization. In addition, outbound malware and spam threatens business relationships with customers and negatively impacts the reliability of the brand. Companies must use content protection strategies to strengthen their brand by preventing the distribution of bad outbound content, including spam and malware from their corporate IP or account.

2. Protecting You and Your Employees from the Dangers of Social Media:
Organizations must also protect their networks and assets from employees who use social media sites. With high click through rates, spam being sent through social media can damage corporate assets as well as cost organizations time and money while they clean infected devices. Inline real-time threat protection and malware analysis of all content, including hidden injected malware attacks and downloads, is necessary to efficiently analyze web traffic for malicious attacks against all endpoints. This provides organizations with the comfort of knowing they are protected, even if their employees have been tricked.

What can businesses do to prevent, or at least minimize, the attacks?

Prohibiting employees from accessing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is no longer realistic.

Blocking and application control policies are becoming inefficient with dynamic user generated content and cross-site, drive-by attacks on good websites. Combined with access through multiple endpoints (mobile devices, PDAs and tablets), old approaches are no longer effective. Security solutions with the ability for deep content inspection give organizations the advantage of utilizing all social media, while guaranteeing compliance mandates are met and the organization is protected, regardless of what the end-user is accessing. The solutions provide visibility of the application content and the aptitude in which to apply flexible policies over users, applications and protocols based on the real-time understanding of the applications’ intent.

It seems individuals and companies will always be one step behind when it comes to preventing such attacks. Hackers and spammers are just more sophisticated in terms of technical expertise. Do you agree?

I agree with this as many companies and individuals are struggling to protect themselves against attacks, especially when conventional approaches, such as blocking web access according to the reputation of the URLs, are used. However, there are innovative solutions out there that go beyond simply checking on the reputation of a link and go deep to make sure that the actual content is not malicious. These deep content inspection based solutions are effective tools to prevent the spreading of malicious content in social media use.

News Desk

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There are times when we search fruitlessly for a news piece to inspire a blog post good enough for you readers. And then there are the rare times when we log on to various news sites and are inundated with headlines relating to this industry. Today is one of those days.

  • It looks like Munich Re has gotten itself into some hot water over a raunchy party hosted by Munich Re-owned Ergo Insurance. Though the party was held back in 2007, the reinsurance giant is still feeling the reputational sting (and likely will for a long time to come) over a party that rewarded top salesmen with prostitutes. The management in charge of organizing that event are no longer employed at Ergo.

    • There were about 100 guests and 20 prostitutes were hired. A German business newspaper said the prostitutes had worn colour-coded arm-bands designating their availability, and the women had their arms stamped after each service rendered.

  • On the completely opposite side of the spectrum, it was announced today that executives at Lloyds Banking Group will be handing back bonuses. This is due to the ₤3.2 billion hit the bank took for “mis-selling payment protection insurance.”
  • In the world of insurance rates, Hardy Underwriting Bermuda Ltd. reports that insurance and reinsurance that renewed during the first quarter of the year saw “average rate increases of 1.5%.”
  • This morning, I stumbled across this management blog, which proves to be quite the resource for managers in any industry, listing the 50 people to follow on Twitter that will provide you with a windfall of information to help you succeed.

The Risks of Social Media: Unfair Trials by Jury

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Being fresh off an 8-day stint as a juror in a civil case, I found the article released today on Law.com very interesting. It focuses on the the right to a fair trial in the age of Facebook, Twitter and the internet in general. As we see in the instances below, in the age of instant information sharing, cases large and small are being disrupted and the somewhat-antiquated court system is trying to figure out how to address the problem of socially networked jurors.

  • Last month, one Michigan juror was disciplined for posting a comment about the case. Before the case was over, this juror posted on Facebook how it was “gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re GUILTY.” Alert defense counsel saw the posting, and the trial judge dismissed the juror, fined her $250 and ordered her to write a five-page essay about the constitutional right to a fair trial.
  • During a February 2010 criminal trial, a New York juror sent a key witness a Facebook friend request. The judge found that the juror’s communication was “unquestionably a serious breach of her obligations as a juror and a clear violation of the court’s instructions.”
  • In March 2009, after eight weeks of trial in a drug case, a Florida juror admitted to the judge that he had conducted Internet research. When the judge questioned other jurors, he found that eight others had been doing the same thing. The judge declared a mistrial.
  • In February 2009, an Arkansas juror used his mobile device to post eight messages on Twitter during court proceedings. Among the messages: “I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money.” The judge denied defense counsel’s motion for a new trial.
  • In 2008, a juror posted online a photograph he took of the murder weapon, a 15-inch, double-edged, saw-tooth knife. The judge held the juror in contempt of court, but denied motion for mistrial.
  • In 2006, the New Hampshire Supreme Court rejected a motion to overturn a murder conviction based on pre-trial comments a juror made on his blog. The juror’s posts included: “now I get to listen to the local riff-raff try and convince me of their innocence.”

If your company ever finds itself involved in a trial by jury, it may not be a completely fair one. Law.com suggests that lawyers should ask jurors during jury selection about the frequency of their Facebook and Twitter use, ask the judge to remind the jurors that they may come forward to report a fellow juror’s misconduct, monitor juror social media activity during trial and remind jurors before and after every jury break about the court’s ban on communicating with others about the case during trial.

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