Girls expelled for Facebook ‘Hit List’

NBC 5 Chicago

The American Civil Liberties Union is fighting the expulsion of three Northwest Indiana girls from Griffith Public Schools for a Facebook conversation resembling a school “hit list.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is fighting the expulsion of three Northwest Indiana girls for a Facebook conversation resembling a school “hit list.”

The ACLU filed a lawsuit against Griffith Public Schools saying the conversation was “clearly meant to be humorous, as evidenced by their repeated use of emoticons such as …”

The organization said the expulsion violated the eight graders’ freedom of speech.The girls insist it was all a bad joke.”It was just very dumb, and I wish I could take it back,” said 14-year-old Sabrina Munsie.”We were just joking around,” said 14-year-old Kennedy Fortier.

“It hurts me that they thought I would really do something like that, because I would not. I regret everything I did.”

According to a police report, portions of a Facebook conversation between Munsie, Kennedy Fortier and a fellow student include Girl 1 writing: “Lets kill the girl were talking about right now?”

Girl 2 types back  ”IM DOWN. its about time…”

Later Girl 1 writes: “I wanna kill people.”

Girl 2 responds, “ii wish uu wouldn’t get caught, cos (expletive), half thee school would be gone by now…”

Their classmate, 14-year-old Courtney Tinsely, was mentioned in that conversation.

“I felt really hurt and upset, and I started to cry,” Tinsely said.Regina Webb, Tinsely’s mom, said she doesn’t see how anyone could convey the conversation as a joke.

“It’s unacceptable,” she said.

“All around the nation bullying is getting people shot and killed in schools,” said Tim Tinsley, Courtney Tinsely’s dad.

The students were expelled.

Fortier’s parents said the conversation was inappropriate, but they call the punishment too harsh.

“They were just talking, just talking garbage, just teenage banter,” said Tabitha Fortier.

“I didn’t think it was acceptable, but it wasn’t something they should get expelled over,” said Bonnie Martin-Nolan.

But Courtney Tinsley’s family isn’t laughing

“There’s no reason why there should be a lawsuit against the school,” Tinsley said. “They did nothing wrong, except for try to protect me.”

Related stories: 

• Mom: Facebook flagged photo of Down syndrome son as inappropriate
• Student drops f-bomb on Twitter, gets expelled
• Woman impregnated at Motorhead concert seeks father on Craigslist

Article source: http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/27/11431244-girls-expelled-for-facebook-hit-list?lite

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Which Facebook Apps Steal Your Data (and How to Stop Them)

The biggest privacy problem with Facebook isn’t Facebook itself, it’s Facebook’s apps. There are more than 500,000 games, puzzles, quizzes and other time wasters in the Facebook platform, many of which exist for the sole purpose of sucking data out of your account. Worse, these apps not only can access your information, they can also grab data from your friends’ profiles, depending on their privacy settings. Thank you, obnoxious Farmville fans.

Facebook establishes limits about what data apps can access and what they can do with it, but they don’t appear terribly motivated to enforce those rules. For example, in October 2010, ten popular Facebook apps were found to be slurping up user data in direct violation of Facebook’s own terms. In response, Facebook removed some of those apps on a Friday, then reinstated them on the following Monday.

Now you can take matters into your own hands and find out who the real data vampires are. PrivacyScore from PrivacyChoice is a Chrome plug in that rates how each app deals with your data on a scale from 0 to 100. It can also do the same for Web sites. You can view these scores on the Web, on Facebook or, if you’ve installed the Chrome extension, by clicking the PS icon in the browser bar when you install an app.

• How to murder a Flash cookie zombie

• Everything you always wanted to know about Web tracking (but were too paranoid to ask)

There are two parts to each score, worth 50 points apiece. The first half is based on the app’s or site’s privacy policy – whether it shares personally identifiable data, conceals your identity from service providers who handle that data, notifies you if Uncle Sam requests your data, and retains your data after you’ve terminated your account.

The second 50 points come from the trackers used by each app or site. That score factors in the privacy policies for each tracker, whether they belong to an oversight group like the Network Advertising Initiative or Ad Choices, and how frequently the company’s tracking cookies appear for a particular app or site. So if Evil Web Tracking Company A appears on 10 percent of the app’s pages and Slightly Less Evil Web Tracking Company B appears on 90 percent, Company B’s privacy score counts more.

The bottom line, says PrivacyChoice CEO Jim Brock, is that you get a single easy-to-grok numerical score without having to wade through all that stuff I just mentioned.

So far, PrivacyScore has rated more than 200 popular Facebook apps and nearly 2000 sites. Using a combination of automated tools for parsing privacy policies as well as human reviewers, they hope to have more than 5,000 apps rated by year end.

Though the service is free to consumers, Brock hopes to make money by selling access to his API to Web publishers who want to publicize what good privacy citizens they are to the rest of the world.

“The biggest surprise has been how much a single number focuses attention and effort on the part of the companies that are rated,” he says. “We get calls from publishers all the time and their first question always is, ‘How do we improve our score?’ I’ll hear from the person who owns privacy at a particular publisher and they’ll say now they finally have the measurement they need to get their boss’s attention.”

One notable flaw in the ointment is that the PrivacyScore is based almost entirely on the policies published by the apps and tracking companies. As we’ve seen more than few times, companies occasionally end up violating their own privacy policies – sometimes accidentally, and sometimes accidentally on purpose.

Brock says they’re still trying to work out how to include actual compliance with policies and things like data breaches into his rating system, as well as how to deal with Do Not Track opt outs that are really Do Not Target Me With Ads But Continue to Collect My Information opt outs.

Is PrivacyScore a cure for Facebook’s app afflictions? Not really. It’s more like an over-the-counter medicine; it relieves the more obvious symptoms without removing the underlying cause. Still, the relief is welcome. Maybe one day it will force the big app publishers to clean up their acts, and push some of the more evil developers out of the app game entirely.

Got a question about social media? TY4NS blogger Dan Tynan may have the answer (and if not, he’ll make something up). Visit his snarky, occasionally NSFW blog eSarcasm or follow him on Twitter: @tynan on tech. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-to’s, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.

Now read this:
Facebook’s ‘man in the middle’ attack on our data
Making Facebook private won’t protect you
Google’s personalized search results are way too personal

Article source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/254636/which_facebook_apps_steal_your_data_and_how_to_stop_them.html

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Yahoo Slams Facebook for ‘Retaliation’ in Patent Lawsuit

Facebook found and purchased eight software patents for the sole purpose of “retaliating” against Yahoo for its pending patent lawsuit against the social networking giant, Yahoo argued in a strongly worded court filing Friday that accuses Facebook of bad faith.

“No employee or officer of Facebook or any affiliated company conceived of, reduced to practice, or developed the alleged inventions claimed in the eight patents acquired from non-practicing entities,” Yahoo wrote, in a 37-page answer to Facebook’s counterclaim. “In fact, the applications for many of these patents predate Facebook itself.”

The software patent skirmish is heating up at a time of significant change for both companies. Yahoo is in the midst of a radical course correction that began with a layoff of 2,000 employees earlier this month, while Facebook is gearing up an IPO with an anticipated $100 billion valuation, expected perhaps as early as next month.

Yahoo’s lawsuit against Facebook alleges that the social media giant’s business infringes on 10 of Yahoo’s patents. The patents cover commonly used features of the social web: personalized advertising, customized portal pages and news feeds, recommendations to connect with other suggested users (and screen out spammers), social music and messaging applications, and authorizing some users (but not others) to see different sections of your content.

Facebook countersued Apr. 3, alleging Yahoo infringed on methods of providing basic web functionality such as search, headline feeds, photo tagging, and, of course, advertising.

Yahoo, which added Friday new infringement concerning search and advertising, claims Facebook lacked a “good faith basis” for its countersuit.

“On information and belief, many, if not all, of these patents were acquired by Facebook for purposes of retaliation against Yahoo in this case,” Yahoo said in the court filing.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail that the social-networking site was “perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions” and that “we disagree with these latest claims.”

Yahoo, which denies it is infringing Facebook’s patents, said in a statement that it intends to “vigorously protect” its intellectual property “for our customers and shareholders.”

Article source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/yahoo-facebook-roundthre/

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From Kaka to Lady Gaga: Twitter’s top 20 most followed

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Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/conversations/from-kaka-to-lady-gaga-twitters-top-20-most-followed/2012/04/25/gIQAoZcnhT_gallery.html?wprss=

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Twitter Granny Wants 80000 Followers

Josephine Lamberti aka J-Dimps

Courtesy Josephine Lamberti

• Facebook
• Tweet

Some 80-year-olds knit. Others take up gardening. And then there’s Josephine Lamberti.

The tech savvy Staten Island, N.Y., grandmother is on a mission to get 80,000 followers on Twitter – a cool thousand for each year of her life – “before I die.”

She’s close to her goal. At press time, she had nearly 67,000 followers, among them Miranda Kerr, Jason Segel and Rihanna, who follow Lamberti, a.k.a., “Josie Dimples” at Twitter.com/J_DIMPS.

@krazykardashian @KhloeKardashian Khloe I took a new pic to help my 80yr old dimples reach 80K followers! RT me doll! twitpic.com/9dilxk

— Josie Dimples (@J_DIMPS) April 27, 2012

Boasting about her #oldladyswag, Lamberti lists her interests as “dancing cooking meatballs.” When she isn’t reaching out to celebs like Khloé Kardashian on Twitter, she’s posting shots of herself decked out in fake tattoos, a personalized “J-Dimps” headband, and, of course, her “Everybody Loves a Player” shirt.

And everybody does, indeed, love this player. “I’m 80yrs old and bleed #OLDladySWAG What ya gonna do about it?” she writes. “How can ya NOT follow my sexy 80 yr old dimples?”

Article source: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20591079,00.html

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Twitter Updates iPhone, Android Apps

Twitter this week rolled out some new features for the Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android apps, adding some refinements to Discover, Search, and Notifications.

The updated versions of the two apps are available for download in Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

“These updates make it easier to find out what’s happening on Twitter,” Twitter product manager Sung Hu Kim wrote in a blog post announcing the new features. “This update was a great collaboration between many teams at Twitter including Android, iOS, Discover, Search and others.”

Breaking down the new features:

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• Twitter has added Activity visibility on the Discover tab in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. The new feature provides “a stream of updates that shows which tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists,” according to Sung. The Activity stream shows up below the redesigned stories in Discover and allows users to tap a story to see tweets related to it, and then reply to, retweet, or favorite what they find.
• Search is now “simpler,” Sung said. The search function offers spelling suggestions for terms users are searching for, as well as related terms. The micro-blogging firm has also added an autocomplete engine that fills out first and last names for people being searched when users type a few letters of their names.
• Twitter for iPhone has also gained some additional unique search features. Tapping the search box in Discover brings up a list of a user’s most-recent queries and searching a username in Connect leads directly to their profile.
• Twitter has also added push notifications for Interactions, the company said. That means users get immediate notice on their iPhones and Android phones when their tweets have been retweeted or favorited, or they’ve gained a new follower. Those notifications are adjustable for tweeters who may not want an endless avalanche of notifications showing up in Interactions all the time.

For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403660,00.asp

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Victims of cyberbullying fight back in lawsuits

ATLANTA (AP) — When a Georgia middle school student reported to police and school officials that she had been bullied on Facebook, they told her there was not much they could do because the harassment occurred off campus.

So the 14-year-old girl, Alex Boston, is using a somewhat novel strategy to fight back: She’s slapping her two classmates with a libel lawsuit.

As states consider or pass cyberbullying laws in reaction to high-profile cases around the country, attorneys and experts say many of the laws aren’t strong enough, and lawsuits such as this one are bound to become more commonplace.

“A lot of prosecutors just don’t have the energy to prosecute 13-year-olds for being mean,” said Parry Aftab, an attorney and child advocate who runs stopcyberbullying.org. “Parents are all feeling very frustrated, and they just don’t know what to do.”

Almost every state has a law or other policy prohibiting cyberbullying, but very few cover intimidation outside of school property.

Alex, who agreed to be identified to raise awareness about cyberbullying, remembers the mean glances and harsh words from students when she arrived at her suburban Atlanta middle school. She didn’t know why she was being badgered until she discovered the phony Facebook page. It was her name and information, though her profile picture was doctored to make her face appear bloated.

The page suggested Alex smoked marijuana and spoke a made-up language called “Retardish.” It was also set up to appear that Alex had left obscene comments on other friends’ pages, made frequent sexual references and posted a racist video. The creators also are accused of posting derogatory messages about Alex.

“I was upset that my friends would turn on me like that,” she told The Associated Press. “I was crying. It was hard to go to school the next day.”

Alex learned of the phony page a year ago and told her parents, who soon contacted administrators at Palmer Middle School and filed a report with Cobb County Police.

“At the time this report was taken in May 2011, we were not aware of any cyberbullying law on the books that would take her specific situation and apply it to Georgia law,” said Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Police encouraged the Boston family to report the fake account to Facebook. Alex’s family said despite requests to Facebook to take the page down, the company did not do so. The website was taken down around the time the lawsuit was filed a week ago.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes and Cobb County school officials declined comment on the case. The two students named in the lawsuit haven’t hired an attorney and their parents couldn’t be reached for comment.

The thorny issue of whether schools may censor students who are off campus when they attack online has led to split decisions in federal courts. Administrators and judges have wrestled over whether free speech rights allow students to say what they want when they’re not at school.

Justin Layshock of western Pennsylvania was suspended after he created a MySpace parody in 2005 that said his principal smoked marijuana and hid beer behind his desk. The suspension was overturned by a federal judge, who found that school officials failed to show the student’s profile disrupted school operations. The judge’s decision was later upheld by an appeals court.

In West Virginia, Kara Kowalski sued school officials after she was suspended from her high school for five days in 2005 for creating a web page suggesting another student had a sexually transmitted disease. A federal appeals court upheld the suspension, dismissing Kowalski’s argument that the school shouldn’t punish her because she created the site at home.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear either case.

Jason Medley, of Houston, filed a defamation lawsuit in June against three of his daughter’s classmates. The classmates were accused of filming themselves making false sexual remarks about his daughter and posting the video to Facebook.

The complaint was settled months later with apologies from the girls and a small donation to charity, Medley’s attorney Robert Naudin said.

“The girls involved likely now understand the wrongful nature of what they did and the harm that can come of such conduct,” he said. “They made a donation out of their allowances to a charitable organization that fights against cyberbullying.”

In Georgia, lawmakers have given school administrators new powers to punish students if they bully others at school, but legislation that would expand the laws to include text messages and social media sites never reached a vote this year.

Seven states have added off-campus harassment to their bullying laws in recent years, though Georgia is not one of them.

“Cyberbullying really goes beyond the four walls of the school or the four corners of the campus, because if you use a cellphone, PDA or social media site, then those activities follow the child both into the school and out of the school,” said House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, a Democrat from Atlanta who co-sponsored the legislation that would have expanded Georgia’s bullying law. “It’s important for the state to really get ahead of this. It’s already happening, but it’s going to be more exacerbated and more difficult the longer we go.”

Alex and her family have started a petition to encourage lawmakers to strengthen Georgia’s law. Her lawsuit seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.

“At first blush, you wouldn’t think it’s a big deal,” said Alex’s attorney, Natalie Woodward. “Once you actually see the stuff that’s on there, it’s shocking.”

___

Follow Greg Bluestein at http://www.twitter.com/bluestein and Dorie Turner at http://www.twitter.com/dorieturner.

Article source: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Victims-of-cyberbullying-fight-back-in-lawsuits-3513480.php

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How Shell Made It Big on Facebook

By Ben Rooney

AMSTERDAM — How does an oil company — not exactly a category of enterprise popular with young activists — clock up just shy of one million Facebook fans in under two months? It’s an impressive achievement by anyone’s measure.

Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil major, has achieved just that. At the Next Web Conference here, the company’s executive vice president for communications — and the man charged with masterminding its social media strategy –revealed the secret to the company’s success in social media.

The appointment of a new chief executive, Peter Voser, marked the sea change in the company’s approach to communications, according to Herbert Heitmann. “He said he wanted the company to engage, to open up,” he said.

Given the size and scope of Shell, which has some 50,000 employees world-wide, it took some time. It wasn’t until May 2011 that Shell had its first Facebook page. “Nothing happened. It was a dead place. We had a few fans, but that was it,” he explains. The company faced a serious issue: Send the social media idea off into the sunset or revise its strategy and go for it in a big way.

“We wanted one million fans,” Mr. Heitmann said. “That is a huge number, but it had to be big because we had to make it clear that it would not happen by itself.” Coincidentally, Greenpeace has around one million fans, too. By contrast, companies such as IBM has around 113,000 and GE has around 300,000.

Mr. Heitmann approached Facebook and brought in social-media experts. “With the help of Facebook and other partners, we designed an approach that was designed to engage and open up,” he said.

The company actively sought out people. ”Somebody who has indicated they are interested in energy, in motor sports, is much more likely to engage with us,” he said. Three areas with the highest level of engagement were the future of energy, working at shell and Shell’s work in the community.

Rather than attempting to hide controversial topics, such as Antarctic oil exploration, the company was open about it. ”When you have a good reason to do what you are doing, you just need to explain yourself. You get more buy-in than if you hide behind walls, and don’t share, don’t give insight, don’t explain what you are doing,” said Mr. Heitmann.

While Mr. Heitmann is delighted with the figures, he is less happy with the geographical breakdown. The company has 224,000 fans in Malaysia, but it fares much worse in Western Europe. “One disappointment is that we only have 1,000 fans here in the Netherlands, given that 10,000 people work for Shell here,” he said.

His main advice to others looking to copy Shell’s success: “If you decide to go social — don’t try to do it with amateur approaches. Be willing to invest, and above all put the right people in, surround yourself with experienced partners.”

“[Social Media] is like the wind, so the least you can do is to build a windmill,” he said.

Article source: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/04/27/how-shell-made-it-big-on-facebook/?mod=google_news_blog

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Olympians Sue Samsung Over Facebook App

Greg Louganis, shown in this file photo from 1984, is among 18 Olympians suing Samsung for including them in a Facebook app they argue profits from their likenesses. Photo: Sadayuki Mikami/AP

Swimmer Mark Spitz, diver Greg Louganis and heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee are among 18 athletes suing Samsung, arguing the tech giant’s Olympic Facebook app uses their names and images without permission.

The kerfuffle involves Samsung’s Olympic Genome Project, which is essentially Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games. The app works through your Facebook profile to build a “family tree” of Olympians you’re connected to. Samsung says its database includes more than 10,000 past and present Olympians and Paralympians.

At least 18 of them aren’t at all happy about it.

They argue in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles that Samsung is using their names and faces to create the impression they endorse Samsung products, including Galaxy tablets and phones. Samsung is profiting from the app and “denying plaintiffs compensation for the use of their names and images,” according to the suit.

“They’re using names and images to sell products, and they’ve admitted in interviews that they’re trying to create a more positive image for Samsung,” said Richard Foster, the plaintiff’s attorney. “California law says you can’t use anybody’s name or image to market a product unless you have their consent.”

This is a problem, Foster said, because “these athletes survive on endorsements,” and some have deals with Samsung’s competitors. Being associated with the Samsung app creates ongoing problems, he said, because “once you use a celebrity’s name or image to sell a product, they’re tied to that product category. It makes it difficult for them to get an endorsement deal with other companies in that product category.”

The suit also accuses Samsung of violating Section 3344 of the California civil code, which makes it a crime to use someone’s name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness for commercial purposes without the person’s explicit permission. The plaintiffs argue Samsung did not receive their permission.

Not so, Samsung said in a statement. The company is “disappointed by the lawsuit” and worked closely with the United States Olympic Committee for more than year, following USOC procedures in communicating with athletes.

“Athletes have had the opportunity to voice their opinions on the program and to control their participation. Samsung will continue to support Team USA and the spirit of the Olympics in our efforts,” the company said, declining to comment further.

Foster said the communication consisted of an e-mail sent to each athlete, informing them of the app and telling them to return an attached letter if they wished to opt out. Foster said not all of his clients received the e-mail, while others may have deleted it without reading it. At least “three or four” returned the opt-out letter but were still included.

“Samsung essentially said, ‘If we don’t hear from you, you’ve entered into a contract,’” Foster said. “Silence is not acceptance of a contract.”

Article source: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/04/olympians-sue-samsung/

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Racial comments directed at Capitals’ Ward through Twitter

Soon after Joel Ward’s Washington Capitals teammates swarmed him after his game-winning goal in overtime of Game 7 against the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, a number of people unleashed racial comments about Ward on Twitter.

Ward, one of the few black players in the NHL, was called the N-word in a number of posts.

According to CNN, Chirpstory, a site that can aggregate other people’s Twitter posts, noted the posts, included the following:

— “Haha that (slur) actually did something.”

— “The fact that a (slur) got the goal makes it ten times worse.”

— “We lost … To a hockey playing (slur)…. What kind of (expletive) is this.”

Ward, 31, told USA Today that he had never heard racist remarks during his four years in the NHL, and he was not aware of the comments until teammate Jeff Halpern told him.

He said the comments were “shocking to see, but it didn’t ruin my day.”

“The racially charged comments distributed via digital media following last night’s game were ignorant and unacceptable,” the NHL said in a statement Thursday. “The people responsible for these comments have no place associating themselves with our game.”

In their statement, the Bruins called the Tweets “classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization.”

Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was more outspoken in his comments in his blog.

“What these people have said and done is unforgivable. I hope they are now publicly identified and pay a huge price for their beliefs,” he said. “There should be zero tolerance for this kind of hate mongering. We will as an organization support Joel Ward. He has been a great teammate and a great citizen.

“He is now the star of stars in our city for his heroics (Wednesday) night. He is a friend and a fantastic player — who delivered — as advertised for us and our fans in the playoffs.”

———————————————–

Article source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/sns-rt-msc-newssx495f0a1-20120426,0,2146515.story

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