CLEwebinars.com is hosting "The Ethics of Social Media Research" webinar on June 28th at 1:00-2:30 pm ET, presented by Carole Levitt, Esq. & Mark Rosch. (This webinar qualifies for 1.5 hours of Ethics credits.)

In this webinar, you will learn how to avoid potential ethical traps when you research social media profiles to uncover investigative/background information about parties, witnesses, experts, jurors, etc., and, in some cases, to use this information as evidence. This program reviews pertinent Ethics opinions issued by the ABA and bar associations in many jurisdictions; discusses relevant caselaw; reviews detailed Guidelines for social media research issued by the New York State Bar’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section; and ties them into the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

The program will also explore:

• Who's your friend?
• Could "friending" violate the deception or ex parte communication ethical rules?    
• Whether it is ethical to research the social media profiles of parties and witnesses during discovery or trial?
• Is it ethical to research the social media profiles of potential jurors before trial or seated jurors during trial?
• Could advising clients to delete, deactivate, or adjust privacy settings on their social networking accounts lead to an ethical violation or spoliation charge against you?
• How to configure security/privacy settings in your own profile to avoid ethical breaches.

The seminar is partially based on the speakers' fifty-five page Social Media chapter from their book, "The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet."

The post CLE Webinar Covers Ethics of Social Media Research appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

One of the questions we're asked most often about conducting investigative research through social networking profiles is, "Do the people whose profiles I'm looking at know that I've looked at their profiles?" Most major social networking sites have refrained from giving the end-users specific information about who has visited their profiles. There have been a few exceptions to this rule like Classmates and LinkedIn. Now MySpace has announced its new "My Visitors" feature, calling it "a cool way to see who's checking out your profile, and let your friends know you've stopped by theirs." 

Despite the hype, this new service will not "out" the clandestine online investigator. MySpace clearly states that in order for someone to see who has viewed their profile:

• both the visitor AND the profile owner must have the "My Visitors" feature enabled
• the visitor must be logged into a MySpace account
• even if the visitor has a MySpace account with the "My Visitors" feature enabled, if the visitor is not logged into the account they will not show up as a visitor

Clearly, any cybersleuth wanting to avoid detection by the "My Visitors" feature can easily do so by not logging into a MySpace account and/or not enabling the feature in their own account.

MySpace describes the service this way:

To turn My Visitors on or off, here’s what you do:

1. scroll down to the My Visitors panel on the right side of your Home page
2. if My Visitors is on, switch it off by clicking Turn off and browse anonymously
3. if My Visitors is off, activate it by clicking Turn My Visitors on (get your mind out of the gutter—you’re just seeing your profile visitors!)
4. once you click the link, the setting is changed—it's that easy

To turn My Visitors on or off with privacy settings, here’s what you do:

1. hover over My Profile and select My Privacy
2. check or uncheck the box next to Turn My Visitors on
3. click Save and your set

Important stuff to know:

• both you and your visitor must have My Visitors activated to display in the panel
• you can turn this feature on or off whenever you want
• your Profile View count (hover over your profile picture, or look under your homepage picture) may be higher than your My Visitors count (in the My Visitors module on your homepage), as friends who have not activated My Visitors will only appear in the profile view counts
• users and visitors must have the same country IP and have the same country settings in their profile to be seen
• if you aren't logged in, visiting another profile will not show you as a visitor 
• My Visitors will only display the last 9 visitors to your profile
• users under 18 can only see visitors who are under 18
• users over 18 can see anyone
• for now, this feature is only available in the US, UK, and India, as well as several non-English based cultures, but don’t worry, it’s coming your way

The post MySpace Creates “Official” Visitor Tracking Tool | “My Visitors” Feature Allows Users to see Who’s Viewed Their Profile appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.