Week 3: Internet Privacy

This week in class we discussed the importance of monitoring the information you release over the Internet because we are quickly losing more and more of our privacy the more that we post in the online world. I will relate this to my business in two ways: my personal privacy and the privacy of the profiles for boutiques that I create.

It will be imperative for me as an entrepreneur to have a squeaky clean record because I am developing new relationships in the business world. When I approach a potential new client, they may decide to look me up on Google as a sort of background check, and I must make sure that they won't find anything compromising on me. Therefore, I will keep my Facebook privacy settings tight and private, and may actually make a specific Facebook profile for myself for business clients that decide to add me. I will make sure that information on my both pages are appropriate and treat everything I post as something I wouldn't be ashamed to see "on the front cover of the New York Times" as my IST professor said so eloquently. I will use the tightest security settings on my profile for friends and family so that those who are not my friends could not even search for the profile on Facebook. My work profile will be searchable, but will still have tight security settings.

The profiles for the boutiques that I create should have loose privacy settings because I want the Facebook/Twitter profile to come up online when others search the boutique. I would also encourage the boutique to remind customers that they are on Facebook/Twitter and encourage their customers to like the boutique on Facebook and follow them on Twitter both verbally and on business cards. I suppose the most important thing is to ensure that inappropriate content does not get accidentally posted on the boutique's Facebook/Twitter profile. Any inappropriate content may offend the clarinet and damage the business's reputation.

Clearly, losing our privacy on the Internet can be used to one's advantage or can force us to have to be more cautious, but if we are educated on the ways to monitor our information we can separate our work and personal lives. Using profile privacy settings will help make my business more successful by keeping my personal life private and making boutiques public for the patrons to subscribe to.