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ScienceDaily (July 9, 2012) Social networking websites offer a potentially large amount of personal information to organizations about job applicants. However, organizations that implement online screening practices through sites like Facebook may reduce their attractiveness to applicants and current employees.

Previous studies show up to 65 percent of organizations screen applicants through social networking websites, said Will Stoughton, a doctoral candidate in industrial and organizational psychology at North Carolina State University.

Employers claim they screen social networks to find the best applicants and weed out the bad ones -- and it can be easy to find personal information. They typically look on sites like Facebook or Google for pictures of alcohol or drug-related use and remarks about previous employers or co-workers, Stoughton said.

Organizations have even been known to ask interns who have access to Facebook to send a friend request to an applicant. Past research has demonstrated a 50 percent chance that an individual will accept a stranger's friend request, he said.

Stoughton, along with NCSU coauthors Lori Foster Thompson and Adam Meade, conducted a study on the effects of screening in the workplace and presented their research at the 27th Annual SIOP Conference in San Diego in April.

In the study, 175 students applied for a fictitious temporary job they believed to be real and were later informed they were screened. The student-applicants said they would be less likely to take a job offer after learning they were being screened. They perceived the action to reflect poorly on the organization's fairness, trust and treatment of employees. They also felt their privacy was invaded, Stoughton said.

While organizations may conduct social network screening to find the best applicants, they don't always accomplish the intended goal, the study found. In fact, the social network screening process actually reduced an organization's attractiveness for the applicant and likely the incumbent worker, Stoughton said.

"By doing this, you assume the applicants that organizations end up choosing are more conscientious, but no studies show that these individuals are any better," Stoughton said. "They could actually be losing better applicants."

Current employees could also be impacted. If employees see the organization looking at their social networking site, they might be likely to leave because their perception of the companies' fairness and trust has changed, Stoughton said.

Social network screening isn't new. Stoughton said he began his research in 2007 when social networking was just becoming popular. He said he knew the possibility of electronic monitoring could grow along with networking.

Original post:
Social network screening of employees can make organizations unattractive to applicants

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -

Ten years ago, on July 19, 2002, it was a day of discovery for people of Baton Rouge. It was the day that a DNA match linked Derrick Todd Lee to numerous murders in the Baton Rouge area, which put a name to the serial killer that was on the loose.

Diane Alexander woke up on Tuesday morning July 9, 2002, not knowing that within a few hours she would be close to death. She was headed for a fight with one of the most brutal and savage killers South Louisiana had seen in sometime. Diane wouldn't have to go far to find that fight, it would show up at her front door.

Derrick Todd Lee attacked Diane Alexander in her Breaux Bridge home after pushing his way in. Lee beat her repeatedly and tried to rape. Alexander's son showed up and interrupted Lee.

Alexander was able to give police a description, 10 years ago, but no one recognized it as Lee. The same afternoon, the Louisiana State Police crime lab had made a big discovery. Scientist looking to link recent murder cases discovered the same DNA pattern had been left at two different crime scenes.

One DNA sample was collected at a murder scene on Stanford Avenue, the other was from a murder scene on Sharlo Avenue, both matched an unknown killer.

Late on that July afternoon police would announce that the same unknown killer had murdered and raped Gina Wilson Green and Murray Pace.

"It appears that we have a single killer," Baton Rouge Police Chief Pat Englade said at the time "We want to caution everybody."

Those words on that July 9th day changed everything and put people on edge.

Although no one had a name to go with, the serial killer's DNA was enough to compare to future crime scenes and would eventually be tied to Derrick Lee a year later in May.

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10 years ago DNA linked Derrick Todd Lee to serial killings

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) A deadly form of a common childhood illness has been linked to the mysterious child deaths in Cambodia that sparked alarm after a cause could not immediately be determined, health officials said Monday.

Lab tests have confirmed that a virulent strain of hand, foot and mouth disease known as EV-71 is to blame for some of the 59 cases reviewed since April, including 52 deaths, according to a joint statement from the World Health Organization and Cambodian Health Ministry. The numbers were lowered from the initial report of 62 cases.

EV-71 is a virus that can result in paralysis, brain swelling and death. Most of the Cambodian cases involved children younger than 3 who experienced fever, respiratory problems that led to rapid shutdown and sometimes neurological symptoms.

Epidemiologists are still trying to piece together information about the cases by interviewing parents because some details may have been omitted or missing from medical charts and specimens were not taken from most children before they died, said Dr. Nima Asgari, who is leading the WHO investigation. Of 24 samples tested, 15 came back positive for EV-71.

"As far as I'm aware, EV-71 was not identified as a virus in Cambodia before," Asgari said, adding that based on the information now available it's likely that the majority of untested patients were infected with it.

"We are a bit more confident. We are hoping that we can come up with something a bit more conclusive in the next day or so," he said.

Hand, foot and mouth disease has been raging across Asia and usually causes a telltale rash. Blistering was only reported in some of the Cambodian cases, and it's possible that steroids administered by doctors could have masked the symptom or it may not have been recorded, he said.

The lab results also identified other diseases in some cases, including mosquito-borne dengue fever and Streptococcus suis, a germ commonly seen in pigs that sometimes infects people, often causing meningitis and hearing loss.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is spread by sneezing, coughing and contact with fluid from blisters or infected feces. It is caused by enteroviruses in the same family as polio. No vaccine or specific treatment exists, but illness is typically mild and most children recover quickly without problems.

The virus gets its name from the symptoms it causes, including rash, mouth sores and blisters covering the hands and feet. Many infected children don't get sick but can spread it to others.

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Common child illness linked to Cambodia killer

The Irish Times - Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Ferdinand was asked to demonstrate precisely how he had gestured towards Terry, writes DANIEL TAYLOR

ON THE pavement outside Westminster Magistrates Court, a lone Chelsea fan in a replica shirt and baseball cap held up a life-size cardboard cut-out of John Terry and tried to attract the attention of the small army of photographers jostling for position behind the metal fences.

Inside up the stairs, turn right past the security guys and through the two sets of double doors Terry sat behind the glass-walled dock of courtroom one. Wearing a pale grey suit, salmon-pink tie and polished shoes, he could have been dressed for a summer wedding. Instead, he was face-to-face with Anton Ferdinand, the opponent he called a f**king black c**t while playing for Chelsea in a Premier League match against QPR last October.

It was the row, ultimately, that led to Terry losing the England captaincy although he still played in Euro 2012 which, in turn, brought about the dispute between Fabio Capello and the Football Association that saw the Italian resign as national team manager. And it all started from a dispute over a penalty-kick that was never given.

Ferdinand was angry that Terry thought he should have been awarded one; Terry barged into him. The two players swapped insults. Terry waved his hand in front of his nose, as if to indicate that Ferdinand had bad breath. Handbags, they agreed after the match. Banter, football stuff, shake hands and keep it on the pitch. But then it got serious. Ferdinand was shown some YouTube footage and told he was trending on Twitter. It had become global news, as he put it. By the time court case 1103985595, listed as John George Terry 07/12/80, had finished for its first day, it was difficult to recollect how many times, even roughly, the word c**t had been used. Forty? Fifty? One hundred? More?

The only certainty was that it was going to be a difficult day for newspapers, radio and television when it came to their asterisk and bleeping policy.

Early in his evidence, Ferdinand was unsure about whether or not he could swear in court. Its a serious issue, the prosecutor Duncan Penny told him. Please do not worry about the language. What did you call Mr Terry? Ferdinand replied: A c**t. And so it began.

At times Ferdinand could be seen looking to his mother, Janice, and other relatives in the front row of the public gallery. Along from them sat Chelseas chairman, Bruce Buck. Representatives from the football anti-racism and discrimination organisation Kick It Out, and the Football Association were also among the assorted media. The court had doled out tickets in the manner of a football club distributing press passes, and the queue of reporters turned away at the door was substantial.

They missed an extraordinary day in which Ferdinand was asked at one point to demonstrate to the court precisely how he had gestured towards Terry on the pitch. He did so with a clenched fist, bending his elbow and delivering a pumping action. Asked what it was supposed to signify, Ferdinand replied: A shag.

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C-word has its day in court as Ferdinand replays face-off

By JOEL T. EMLEN The McLane Law Firm

A: Most often, yes, because when it comes to social networking sites, there is little that is truly personal or private.

Social networking sites have over one billion users worldwide. Facebook alone, is approaching one billion and has more than 150 million in the United States (an estimated 40 percent of the U.S. population). Facebook users in the United States spend more than 50 billion minutes per month on the site the equivalent of 100,000 years engaging in a whole host of activities, such as posting pictures and videos, giving status updates, or making comments on their friends' Facebook walls. Twitter is not far behind with more than 100 million U.S. accounts and in excess of 400 million tweets per day worldwide. Given that these sites are social, it should come as no surprise that users often do not think critically about the content of their posts or believe the information is personal and private because only friends can see it.

Courts, however, are finding that parties in lawsuits must disclose information posted on social media sites, and some courts are compelling parties to turn over their log-in information to opposing counsel. The information subject to disclosure may include publicly accessible portions of the site, as well as what is available only to friends. But if your friends tag you in any posting, that information is shared with others, not just your friends.

Generally, for a party to obtain information available only to friends, there must be some evidence found in the public view of that party's profile that is relevant to the case. Of course, if your friend is the opposing party, this limitation would not apply, and it raises the question especially in the context of employment and workers compensation disputes about whether to be connected on these sites with co-workers and supervisors.

Social networking sites let us communicate more easily with more people than ever before. With the click of a button or the touch of an app, we can connect or reconnect with family and friends and share photographs and videos of birthdays, holidays, cookouts and our most recent vacation. But you also must know that information posted to these sites is not personal and private and may become public and shared with others in a lawsuit. Staying vigilant and scrutinizing this information is a must. Joel Emlen can be reached at joel.emlen@mclane.com.

Know the Law is a bi-weekly column sponsored by The McLane Law Firm.

We invite your questions of business law. Questions and ideas for future columns should be addressed to: Know the Law, The McLane Law Firm, P.O. Box 326, Manchester, NH 03105-0326 or emailed to knowthelaw@mclane.com. Know the Law provides general legal information, not legal advice. We recommend that you consult a lawyer for guidance specific to your particular situation.

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A Question of Law Information posted on social networking sites isn't private