Could Social Networking at Work Leave SMBs Playing Russian Roulette with the Law?

Subscription Options

Subscribe Magazine

Subscribe Newswire

Widgets & RSS Feeds

Research by IDC published in January this year found that 57 percent of U.S. workers use social media for business purposes at least once per week. As social networking and collaboration tools that started out in the home become increasingly absorbed into the workplace it appears that the business environment is inexorably changing forever.

As ever, major change in business culture brings new risks. Social networking at work presents unseen challenges for both individuals and companies. This month Purdy FitzGerald Solicitors, a prominent law firm, was among the first to sound a warning. They note that the more business embraces social networking techniques to spread their messages and build their brands the more the dividing lines between personal and company data are becoming blurred. For firms there is a real danger this could lead to ownership issues being contested in the courts.

At SpamTitan we believe that Internet filtering software such as our own WebTitan product can help. In Q1 of this year we conducted our own audit of 200 SMBs worldwide to find out attitudes to filtering. In almost every case Internet access and some social networking applications were permitted in the workplace. But while 76.4 percent said Web filtering was important around half (49 percent) of all respondents admitted not using one. At least 50 percent of those without filtering said they were taking positive steps to secure themselves against the possibility of either attack or employee misunderstanding in respect of social networking applications. A further 16 percent who had not yet done anything were intending to do something about it in the next 12 months. This still leaves a significant proportion doing nothing at all.

To date legal cases involving disputes between employees and employers over who owns that data have tended to favor the employer. In a recent UK case a recruitment consultant moved confidential contact information to his LinkedIn account. The court reported that the consultant had planned to set up his own company in direct competition using the contact database concerned. He had thought that once the contacts had been invited to connect to him and they had accepted on LinkedIn, their contact information ceased to be confidential because it had been seen by all his other contacts. This decision was one of the first to highlight the tension between businesses encouraging employees to use social networking websites for work but then claiming that the contacts and content remain confidential information at the end of their employment. It is a sign of things to come.

As social data is shared between increasing numbers of sites the question of ownership becomes almost impossible to track. A piece of information may pass through various social networking sites becoming retouched as it does so. At what point are the rights to that data transferred? The issue is a moot point with important implications for business as it appears technology is once again outpacing the legal system.

Developments taking place in the U.S. and the EU could soon provide a greater legal imperative for companies adopt formal social media policies or risk playing Russian roulette with the law.

One such initiative is 2015.eu which calls for a charter of individuals’ Internet rights and aims to entitle Internet users to demand their information is removed from company systems even if it was collected with their consent. Elsewhere the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently warned that even positive statements by employees in social media postings may constitute endorsements or testimonials and create liability for companies. With so much information being posted online and shared the boundaries will continue to become increasingly blurred.

Companies need to introduce policies and procedures and deploy technology to help them manage every employee’s Internet usage at the individual level. We are in a new era and it is incumbent on every company to include a corporate social media policy alongside their social networking strategy. Without such clear social media policies many employees will be unaware of their rights and employers risk being drawn into costly legal wrangles with their employees over data ownership disputes.

About Ronan Kavanagh
Ronan Kavanagh is responsible for Global Sales and Marketing for the SpamTitan suite of products. Educated in NUI Galway, Ireland, he joined Copperfasten Technologies in June 2004. Prior to joining Copperfasten Ronan worked with Eurokom, an Internet Security Services provider, delivering a wide range of solutions to both Government and large blue chip companies in Ireland.