Image: Preferable to premium rate phonelines? Initiatives like Teach Your Granny to Text spread understanding of new technology...
As social networks become a part of most people’s lives, all sorts of services are springing up to help them, from mobile phone apps to reputation search engines. There is though a darker side, of spammers, scam artists and money-making schemes.
I came across an advert recently for Social Network UK Helpline, which charges people £1.50 a minute for advice about using social networks.
The service is run by a company whose founder has previously been investigated by Mirror journalists for providing similar “services” providing premium rate advice about eBay and PayPal. A call to the latter by the journalists about how re-set a password cost £15 – information that was readily available on PayPal’s help section.
It’s sad to think that vulnerable people confused about privacy and other social network issues may run up big bills using such a service. It also emphasises the responsibility social networks have to their users to make their support pages easy to use.
Meantime, the best that the more web literate people can do is offer to help those with less knowledge. Schemes like Teach Your Granny to Text and other initiatives from the magnificent We Are What We Do are an optimistic counterpoint to the depressing influx of companies preying on people’s lack of experience in the social web.
Teach yourself how social networks work and then tell your friends and family…
If you have read Me and My Web Shadow you will be familiar with the idea of a Google Shadow, a phrase coined by Jeff Jarvis, and how Google is the most important tool in beginning to get a sense of what your web shadow looks like.
Open University blogger Tony Hirst posted today ...
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In the second of our Real Stories articles, we talk to Joanne Dobson who is the Director of Strategic Relationships at Coventry University. Me And My Web Shadow caught up with her to find out how she is tackling the management of her web shadow - and to find out what she has ...
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The world is now so firmly divided into people who Google everything and those who rarely think of it that it's almost become an alternative definition of intelligence. I was sitting on the tube the other night facing somebody wearing a security pass for an educational institution. It had their name ...
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There are some interesting parallels between the rules at the start of Me and My Web Shadow - advice like "get a thicker skin" and "you're always on the record" - and the three headline changes Emily Nussbaum calls out in her recent New York ...
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Me And My Webshadow talks to “Rowteight” – a senior manager at a hight street financial services provider about the ways he networks professionally and personally and how he manages the overlap between personal and professional online.
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Research from Google shows that even experienced users of social networks often don't realise what they are sharing with whom.
In a presentation that has gained a great deal of attention over the past week among in the web industry, Google researcher Paul Adams talks about how we have problems translating our real world ...
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Today is the official publication date for Me ...
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Younger people in America could teach their parents a thing or two about responsible behaviour online, according to US research organisation Pew Research Center. Meanwhile older people are more likely to be careless ...
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The introduction to Me and My Web Shadow said that the book would probably be out of date before it was even published, and I wasn’t joking. It also said that Facebook was probably the most important place to start looking at what information about you is private and what is available for anyone ...
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