Sacramento actually does something useful… Be still my palpitating heart!

 Well what do you know?

The Governor actually signed laws I can agree with.

One is AB 1844 and the other is SB 1349. Both have to do with the rights of an employee or prospective employee to refuse to provide their Facebook or other social media IDs or passwords.

See the article here.

All I can say is this; It’s sad as hell that we even had to write a law to provide this kind of protection.

We could have avoided the situation by simply having everyone say NO when they were asked for their ID and Password.

What I find particularly astounding is that people actually did it. You do realize that you can make purchases from within Facebook? SO if you give someone your ID and Password you might as well have given them your ATM card and PIN.

You wouldn’t have done that… so why would you give someone access to your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or whatever account? 

The more astounding part is that HR people felt somehow entitled… 

Then again if you look at so called “Professional Job Search Sites” like Cybercoders,  what you see is a very social media oriented site.

I mean really… do I need to see a photo gallery of my recruiter partying or getting married?

Nope! What I need is for them to stop playing on a Facebook-like site and get on the phone to find me a job.

This whole Social Media thing is completely out of control.

I was talking to an acquaintance over the weekend who commented that he didn’t know where people found the time to update their Facebook status so often.

He also has an evil sense of humor and has considered updating his Facebook status with information like “I’m going to the bathroom”, “I’m in the parking lot at work”, “I’m leaving my cubicle” and other inanities as a parody of all those people who take Facebook so seriously.

We also were discussing some of the darker sides of Facebook. What about those people that for whatever reason decided they wanted to stalk you? 

In his line of work that’s a possibility because he’s dealing with people that have problems.

It’s ashamed that these new laws do nothing to stop other web sites from publishing private information about you.

Seriously, do a Google search of your name sometime and see what pops up. You might be surprised to find your name, your address, where you work, even a picture of you and your house. It’s spooky how invasive things have gotten.

Recently, I searched my name and found that three addressees were listed for me. One of the addresses was a place that I’d worked. The website listed me as the owner of that building and that my net worth was in the 10’s of millions of dollars (I wish!)

This same web site listed me as the owner of an apartment complex and also listed my current address. Again all  of these entires had an estimated net worth associated with me. This is concerning because the over-inflated net worth could potentially make me a target of unscrupulous people that wanted to try the old “Slip & Fall” scam on my property hoping to get a big settlement.

Boy, would they be in for a big disappointment! 

I’m pleased to see that the state government at least is taking some action. Miraculous for Sacramento to do any kind of work, much less something really useful.

I wish that the law had been more far reaching, curtailing the private information collection and dissemination. I suppose that a law like that will be proposed when some politician gets stalked.

In the mean time… 

Good Job Sacramento!