HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

Cautions to using various on-line sites

I read in the Des Moines Register today an article from the  San Jose Mercury News about a warning from the ACLU about protecting your privacy on Facebook.  And yesterday I had two 'odd' occurrences which I'm pretty sure were spam, spoofing or sending a virus:  a fake text message sent to me and a notification on my Facebook application on iPhone that suggested a person in my friend's list had sent a quiz to me.  The text message directed me to click to download or see something.  Of course, I didn't - one reason being that the Facebook App on my iPhone has icons with each message but this one was missing a similar icon.

I have reported the fake SMS to the real person and the FB spoofing as well.  And then, last night, I heard from a friend about her experience with spoofing from FB.  Facebook does have a link for people who want to know how to handle spam, spoofs, phishing...I just wish they made it easier to find:  go to the Facebook Security Help page:  Security.

So:  check out your privacy settings, report any problems to Facebook, and take ACLU's "quiz" to see how FB now handles your private information.  The ACLU warns:

Even if your Facebook profile is "private," when you take a quiz, an unknown quiz developer could be accessing almost everything in your profile: your religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, pictures, and groups. Facebook quizzes also have access to most of the info on your friends' profiles. This means that if your friend takes a quiz, they could be giving away your personal information too.

Thoughts to live by

   We cannot know for certain how long we have here.  We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way.  We cannot know what God's plan is for us.

 

     What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and with love, and with joy.  We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves.  We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures.  And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of others.

from President Obama's Eulogy for Senator Kennedy, my favorite part.

Finding and Getting Rid of Duplicates

I sometimes find I have duplicate images in Aperture [not to mention duplicate music, PDFs etc] and have used Tidy Up! in the past to find and move/trash the dups.  I just did it today in an Aperture project and want to report that it does a great job and doesn't mess with Aperture other than to keyword the images after which you can deal with them in Aperture [as you should].  I've used it to find and move/trash other documents and there are a plethora of choices you can make as far as what you want to search for and where you want to search.  Highly Recommended.

Tidy Up!

A site focusing on the iPhone, with loads of links & info.

How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0

via www.ismashphone.com

Stop those chain emails, hoaxes and urban legends

I receive Security Tips from the government's US-CERT list United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team [worth signing up for Cyber alerts -  US-CERT] and the following just came in, how to prevent or cut down on those hoaxes and urban legends that are spread through emails from 'friends' - Basically, don't forward chain emails on, but if you really feel you must, check it out first - even from reliable sources you'd be surprised how often the content is an actual hoax/urban legend.

You should read the full email [on US-CERT site] but for now here is where to check out those chains:

   If you want to check the validity of an email, there are some websites that
   provide information about hoaxes and urban legends:
     * Urban Legends and Folklore - http://urbanlegends.about.com/
     * Urban Legends Reference Pages - http://www.snopes.com/
     * TruthOrFiction.com - http://www.truthorfiction.com/
     * Symantec Security Response Hoaxes -
       http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
     * McAfee Security Virus Hoaxes - http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

Use of the epithet 'Nazi' in the health care debate

The writer of Mudflats, a progressive political blog from Alaska writes [in part]:

On my 21st birthday, I woke up in the morning and drove to Dairy Queen.  I got soft serve vanilla ice cream with strawberry topping and I ate it for breakfast.  Why?  When I was a child I asked once if I could have ice cream for breakfast, and my mother said, 'You can have ice cream for breakfast when you’re 21.'€  And so I did....My father spent his 21st birthday in a prisoner of war camp.  Deaf in one ear, and completely flat-footed, he could have easily been a “4-F” and escaped service for medical reasons.  He was a peaceful man but he, like so many of his generation, felt the need to serve his country...I am tired of people comparing Obama to Hitler. I am tired of seeing signs with swastikas and nazi symbols at health care rallies. I am tired of people saying that a health care plan designed to uplift millions of Americans to give them dignity, and choice and the ability to care for their families, is like Naziism. ....As time passes, and as the greatest generation becomes a memory, passing into history one soul at a time, it is up to the generations that follow them to keep “Hitler” and “Nazi” out of the clutches of those who would make them political buzzwords for people they don’t like, or policies they don’t understand.

via www.themudflats.net [see further]

Rampant Sex Harassment Costs Lowe's $1.7 Million to Settle

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced a major settlement of a discrimination lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act against Lowe's  for $1.72 million and significant remedial relief on behalf of three employees in their twenties who were subjected to a pervasive sexually hostile work environment, including physical and verbal harassment and sexual assault, and retaliated against for complaining about it.

via www.eeoc.gov

It's amazing in this day and age that this stuff still goes on.  

Time to get your free credit reports...but be careful

Loads of people/sites out there want to offer services, but if you go through the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] website you'll find the office site,  Annual Credit Reports.  It's a fairly easy process and you can download your free report and review it later and then get in touch if there are errors.  Good idea to do this once a year.

 just a flower picture, from the Veneto Region, in Italy.

Another Reason to be Careful about your Internet Postings

Here's another reason [or maybe the main one]:  45% of employers search job applicant social networking sites for information about the person.  Mashable

 45% of them use social networking sites to research job candidates, with an additional 11% planning to implement social media screening in the very near future.

So, should you 'friend' your employees on Facebook?

Mashable is an excellent compendium of everything 'social media'.  Worth getting its twitters or updates by email.  In any event, this topic was recently posted and is worth some attention:  Friending your Employees:  What are the Rules?.