Social media is a two-edged sword for students

Remember in ancient days when a picture was worth a thousand words? Now, one click is worth a million viewers. Social media is here to stay. Facebook claims it has more than 1 billion active monthly users. Twitter claims 200 million users. According to a Pew Research Center study on the Internet conducted in late 2012, 67 percent of adults use Facebook, 16 percent use Twitter and 15 percent use Pinterest.

Even the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had to acknowledge that social media is the new norm. On April 2, the SEC released a report stating that users can provide public disclosures for corporate communications with social media channels if users comply with fair disclosure regulations. The SEC’s announcement followed its investigation of Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix Inc. and his first-time use of his personal Facebook account as a way to provide corporate metrics and whether Hasting’s action violated regulations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Therein lies the major problem with quick-trigger social media senders. Sometimes they don’t think of consequences before they submit messages into cyber space. Social media requires caution, restraint and common sense.

As educators and anti-fraud practitioners we can use social media apps and sites to research, investigate cases of suspected fraud and conduct background-hiring checks. That’s helpful. Students, however, can quickly post questionable comments and photos that can come back to bite them when prospective employees do name searches. That’s harmful.

HELPING EDGE OF THE SWORD

Social media brings people together, but it also plays a big role in disseminating information on a variety of subjects, including investments. According to a study published in March 2011 in the Journal of Computational Science, academicians Johan Bollena, Huina Maoa and Xiaojun Zengb found that the mood reflected in Twitter messages predicted the move days ahead, with almost 88 percent accuracy, of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

It’s no wonder, then, that perpetrators use this powerful medium to influence the market and entice victims to buy fraudulent securities. As a result, the FBI has assigned agents to scour the Internet for signs of securities fraud. The agency believes that social media sites like Twitter play an important role in perpetrating investment frauds. 

Before students become fraud fighters they, too, can benefit from the positive aspects of social media sites. If they join groups that are related to their work interests they can demonstrate to potential employers that they’re serious about such topics as fraud examination. They can do this on social media sites such as LinkedIn, which 20 percent of U.S. adults use for business networking, according to Pew Internet Project research.

Consider giving students these suggestions about using LinkedIn: 

• Keep information current. Some employers are now using LinkedIn to identify potential hires. 
• Send connection requests to university and ACFE student chapter guest speakers and those who attend professional meetings; they could be potential employers. 
• Carefully consider whom to link to. (“You are whom you associate with.”)
• Be discriminating whom you recommend plus what you write in your recommendations and how you write them. 
• Endorse only those you truly believe deserve it. 

THE HARMFUL EDGE OF THE SWORD

Most students know about the dangers of misusing social media but they continue to do it. Even professionals occasionally slip up. Consider these examples:  

• Chrysler’s media agency fired an employee who used an expletive in one of her tweets. She had intended to use her personal Twitter account but mistakenly used the business account, according to “Worker FIRED for F-Bomb Tweet On Chrysler Twitter Account” in the March 10, 2013, Huffington Post.
• A teacher from Georgia posted, on Facebook, a comment that included an expletive and photographs of her drinking alcohol. Although her page was private, the postings offended several fellow teachers who were Facebook friends; her principal asked her to resign or face suspension, according to “Former Teacher Sues For Being Fired For Facebook Pics,” Nov. 11, 2009, on wsbtv.com. 
• A woman working at National Suisse in Switzerland called in sick; she complained of migraines and said that she needed to be in a darkened room. Her employer fired her when someone noticed that she was active on Facebook during working hours, according to “Facebooking while out sick gets employee fired,” by Erik Palm, April 27, 2009, on cnet.com. 
• Thirteen airline crew members were fired for complaining about work and insulting passengers in Facebook discussions, according to “Virgin flight crew fired for insulting passengers via Facebook,” by Stevie Smith, Nov. 3, 2008, The Tech Herald.  

Users can easily post derogatory comments about others that they’d never say in person. Sometimes, certain types of online statements can be criminal. For example, a Florida Court of Appeals recently ruled that posting threats on a personal Facebook page can constitute a crime and be prosecuted under state law (O’Leary v. State of Florida, 1D12-0975).  

It’s bad etiquette for someone to denigrate another person’s character in a private email. However, now posting those same comments on Facebook (or other sites) can be libelous — tantamount to making the statement in public to an unknown number of individuals.

Unfortunately, social media users unguardedly type thoughts online that they might not include in any other published medium. Regardless, whether those words end up in a printed newspaper, magazine or book, or in an email, Facebook posting or Tweet, the courts can consider them libelous.

See these three major “cyber libel” court cases: Cubby, Inc. vs. CompuServe Inc., 776 F.Supp. 135 (S.D.N.Y. 1991), Stratton Oakmont vs. Prodigy (1995) and Zeran vs. America Online (1996).

Also, in 2006, a jury in Broward County, Fla., decided that a Florida woman should receive $11.3 million in a defamation lawsuit against a Louisiana woman who posted messages on a blog accusing her of being a “crook,” a “con artist” and a “fraud.” (Read “Jury awards $11.3M over defamatory Internet posts,” by Laura Parker, USA Today, Oct. 11, 2006.)

PROCEED WITH SOME TREPIDATION

We offer these further suggestions to students: 

• Be cautious about installing applications, such as games, that interact with a social media site because some can contain malware.
• Keep anti-virus software current.
• On Facebook, consider choosing the “Only Friends” privacy setting. However, even with this setting, Facebook has inadvertently disclosed information that users hadn’t intended others to see. 

Also, some “friends” might not turn out to be so friendly and share delicate information. In a recent case, police suspect that someone obtained information from Facebook to bluff a parent into believing that his daughter had been kidnapped and that he should pay a ransom to secure her release. 

Even disclosing a birthdate — especially coupled with a birth city — can provide identity thieves with enough information to commit fraud. Cyber criminals can deduce birth years, find birth certificates and then obtain other forms of identification.  

• Think twice about posting comments and photos because graduate school admissions officers and potential employers trawl social media sites too.
• What you “Like” on Facebook might telegraph information you might not want made public according to a research study reported in the article, “On Facebook, you are what you ‘like,’ study finds,” by Geoffrey Mohan, March 11, in the Los Angeles Times. University of Cambridge researchers studied nearly 60,000 U.S. Facebook members and established significant correlations among likes and certain personality traits such as introversion, conservativeness and willingness to be open to new things. 
• Read and understand any social media policies that an employer has endorsed. According to a “2012 Professionalism in The Workplace Study” by the Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania recent study, 83 percent of newly hired employees were excessively using social networking sites — especially Facebook and Twitter — during working hours. 

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS

Use of social media sites also might:   

• Erode writing skills. In our opinion, those who use slang and abbreviations in posts can inhibit spoken communication and cause poor grammar and syntax in other writing projects. 
• Reduce investigation skills. In our experience, as we communicate less with our voices, eyes and ears, we tend to lose the ability to pick up important information during human interactions. For example, if we’re interviewing a subject in a fraud examination, we discern not only his or her words but tone, inflection, voice speed, eye movements and other body language to gauge veracity. If we continually use electronic communication such as email, instant messaging, Twitter and Facebook, we believe we’re usually only looking at the words and we’ll miss human subtleties, such as body language, which can account for up to 60 to 70 percent of human communication. Therefore, if we don’t practice enough in-person questioning, we think we won’t develop the skills that we need to adequately interview subjects.
• Divert attention. Research in multitasking indicates that humans have a limited capacity to assimilate information and that attempting to do too many tasks at one time hampers productivity, according to “Study: If You Multitask Often, You’re Impulsive and Bad at Multitasking,” by Lindsay Abrams, Jan.28, The Atlantic. Thus, if a student studies while a TV is on and Facebook is open, he or she will have a more difficult time learning new material. 
• Waste time. Obviously, spending an excessive amount of time on social media sites can be counterproductive to a student’s study of subjects such as fraud examination and can ultimately affect job prospects. 

KEEP ONE SIDE OF THE SWORD SHARP

As parents can attest, possibly one of the hardest things to teach students is that amoral activities — such as social media — might benefit but also hinder their goals. As academics and practitioners we can encourage budding fraud examiners to sharpen one side of that sword and leave the other side dull.

Richard Hurley, Ph.D., J.D., CFE, CPA, is a professor at the University of Connecticut (Stamford) School of Business. He’s a co-author of the “Global Fraud Focus” column in Fraud Magazine. 

George R. Young, Ph.D., CFE, CPA, is an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University and the academic director of the forensic concentration in the Masters of Accounting program at the university. He is chair of the ACFE Higher Education Advisory Committee and co-author of “Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination,” a textbook published by McGraw-Hill. 

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