Facebook, Twitter, email passwords made private under California law

Facebook, Twitter, email passwords made private under California law

Source: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_21651158/facebook-twitter-email-passwords-made-private-under-california

   According to the article, California, home to many of the world's social media companies, now has the nation's strictest privacy laws preventing boss or college from surfing through the personal information posts on sites like Facebook. It will be illegal for companies or universities to ask for access to personal social media or email accounts under two bills signed Thursday. California is the first state to enact laws protecting both students and workers after Maryland and Illinois earlier this year approved laws affecting just workers and Delaware did the same for just students. (About a dozen other states and Congress are considering similar legislation.)

   From my point of view, I strongly support these movements and believe that these laws somehow will protect people from unwarranted invasions of their personal social media accounts. It's true that there have been some employers asking for personal passwords or requiring applicants to open their Facebook pages during interviews. In addition, companies and universities are increasingly trying to monitor employees' or students' personal pages like Twitter and Google+. So far, we've had no choice but to follow their instructions or just change our privacy settings to protest. From now on, at least, we have a protector, legally.

   However, despite the laws, there is still nothing to prevent employers and universities from looking through our social media pages if they are made 'public'. Even though experts recommend tweaking privacy settings to protect ourselves so not everyone can see personal posts and many people block public access through privacy settings, there are still possibilities to make our personal information open on public, unintentionally. That's why there's enough information on the Internet where we can find out ample information about people that we know.

   The first thing we have to do is to admit that we live in social media era and try to manage our personal information on social media pages very carefully. By the way, It can be both new opportunities and threats for companies which always try to get consumer's information for certain purposes like marketing. I believe companies somehow can take advantage of these trends. For instance, It will lead to companies to find some legal and proper ways to interact with consumers & fans and ask for access to personal information or opinions, such as making some new-concept, protected online communities or Facebook pages, prompting consumers to trust them and have better images of them.