Teacher's aide suspended for refusing to let school look at her Facebook page

dailymail.co.uk ^ | 4-2-12 | Christine Show

[rawhide]

A teacher's aide was suspended after she refused to let the school district she worked access her Facebook profile. Officials at the Frank Squires Elementary School in Cassopolis, Michigan insisted they check Kimberly Hester's account last year after she posted a picture of a co-worker wearing pants around the ankles and a pair of shoes. The woman is trying to take legal action against the school now that she has been put on unpaid leave.

She told WSBT-TV: 'I did nothing wrong. And I would not, still to this day, let them in my Facebook. And I don't think it's OK for an employer to ask you.' She went on to say: 'I have the right to privacy.' A parent who Facebook friends with Hester alerted the school about the picture.

That is when Robert Colby, superintendent of the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District, asked Hester to see her personal page on the social-networking site. Ms Hester said of the encounter: 'He asked me three times if he could view my Facebook and I repeatedly said I was not OK with that.' The district put her on paid administrative leave after she refused to provide Mr Colby access to her account. The school later suspended her and stopped paying her.

[bjorn14]

[It’s a violation of your user agreement to relinquish your password to any third party]

And it’s a violation for the principal to use her account also.

[the invisib1e hand]

I suspect there’s a thriving underground market for information just like there is for body parts.

[upchuck]

From the link you posted: It should be noted that how deep your deletion goes is highly questionable — Facebook still stores some of your information even though you've destroyed your way of accessing it.

I suspect Facebook still stores all of your info. It's the way they make money. Facebook, in addition to being evil, is like the Hotel California: You can check in but you can never leave.

[the invisib1e hand]

My hunch is that Facebook is an innuendo machine, manufacturing “relationships” that don’t exist based upon presumptuous data analysis. People are constantly getting “invites” from people who have not necessarily contacted them. If so, regardless of what you post or do not, a “virtual profile” can be said to exist.

[the invisib1e hand]

My hunch is that Facebook is an innuendo machine, manufacturing “relationships” that don’t exist based upon presumptuous data analysis. People are constantly getting “invites” from people who have not necessarily contacted them. If so, regardless of what you post or do not, a “virtual profile” can be said to exist.

[MrEdd]

There isn’t another kind of facebook account...

[GreenHornet]

I guess next they’ll be demanding the right to open your mail.

[tomkat]

And the bastards can put this one right next to it !

[Jonty30]

Like all things, it can be useful depending on how it is used. :)

I don’t post miscellaneous meanderings or read them, like most people. I participate in religious, philosophical discussions that i find most people in real life care to not get into.

I personally find it reasonably stimulating.

[CAluvdubya]

You don't use your real name.

I have a friend who used a made up name and contacted some of us by email to let us know who they really were. Wish I'd thought of it!

[PapaBear3625]

If the person had her pants around her ankles in public, it may not be the fault of the person who posted the picture but the person who put themselves in a compromising position. (If you don’t want pictures of yourself doing drunk stupid stuff on the web, don’t get drunk enough in public to do stupid stuff.)

To a bureaucrat, the biggest offense is to make the organization look bad.

The article said it was a co-worker, so likely it was a teacher with union protection. It's easier to make an example of an aide who has no tenure or civil service protection.

Teach your kids to stay off facebook.

[SuzyQue]

I agree with her that it is egregious and her employer should not have demanded to see her FB page. Having said that, her employer can decide to employ her or not, and if she had a history of posting inappropriate pics of her co-workers, they may decide they don’t want to pay her paycheck. Lesson: don’t post stuff on your FB page you don’t want people to see, especially if it’s about other people at work.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

You are a fool, if:

1) You have a Facebook page under your own name, or with photos or *any* other personal information on it. (note: may be abbreviated to “You have a Facebook page.” This also applies to other social media, and *anything* to do with Google.

2) You put any other personal information on the Internet, other than minimal credit card information on secure sites. (Credit card security is now so awful that you should regularly, once a year, during a “quiet time”, request replacement cards with a new number.)

I highly recommend using the following sites:

PCTools Secure Password Generator. (Do not limit yourself to 8 character passwords, either. Go for a minimum of 21.)

http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/

Fake name and address generator.

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

10 Minute (renewable) functional email address.

http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

Adobe Flash Cookies manager. Some sneaky websites (like Google), in addition to creating cookies that can be easily deleted from within your browser, also create “flash cookies”, that retain your information when your regular cookies have been deleted, and “reload” your browser cookies. Bookmark this site, as it lists and allows you to delete these flash cookies. Note: the control panel on the site is *not* an image, but a real control panel showing data from your computer.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

[Oshkalaboomboom]

She got snitched on by a parent who was also her Facebook friend. What I don’t understand is why the parent didn’t just get a screenshot of the picture, turn that in to the Principal and leave her out of it.

[BykrBayb]

And don’t write it in your diary either. That whole right to privacy thing is so overrated. /s

[JimRed]

Showing how much/little I know about Facebook, I thought you just looked up anyone on it, and got whatever they wanted to “share”.

[JimRed]

One World Government. Right around the corner.

Who do we have to remove first to slow it down a bit?

< /rhetoric >

[massgopguy]

Imagine getting rejected from a job at the comic book store for not submitting to the Vulcan Mind Meld?

[massgopguy]

Imagine getting rejected from a job at the comic book store for not submitting to the Vulcan Mind Meld?

[FourPeas]

You have a Facebook page under your own name, or with photos or *any* other personal information on it. I have several social networking connections in my real name so if someone looks for it, they find it. It's purposefully vanilla with nothing interesting or too personal, but if someone wants to see my page, it's there. It's a passive honey pot of sorts.

The real info...that's elsewhere accessed only through a proxy (or two) and usually through https. It's certainly not hack proof, but any entity who takes the time to get through it won't be stopped anyway.