Facebook slur gets SA worker fired - 27
May
A South African has been fired and two others suspended for posting
Facebook updates considered unacceptable by the their companies, The
Times reported on Wednesday. A 23-year-old administration clerk at a
clothing factory south of Durban lost his job for calling his boss a
"serial masturbator" on Facebook after being reported by a co-worker.
Wits Law Clinic Professor Willem de Klerk said the Constitution promotes
freedom of expression "provided that what is expressed is based on
fact". A 25-year-old Johannesburg-based Facebook user was suspended for
punting a competitor’s product on her profile homepage. Another, also
25, was suspended for venting about his Pretoria-based employer's
alleged laziness. De Klerk warned that malicious Facebook comments are
as illegal as verbal defamatory statements. -
IOL
website
See also : Equality
Courts. Zille attacked on Facebook
See also : Google
executive tells law school grads to be innovative in legal
profession
Libraries skeptical of Google books settlement - 4 May
Skeptical library groups asked on Monday for "rigorous oversight" of
Google's agreement with authors and publishers that would allow it
to put millions of books online. The American Library Association
and Association of Research Libraries said they were concerned that
Google would not safeguard readers' privacy and that it would be the
only digital source for many books and major academic journals.
Other groups have complained to the US Justice Department about
antitrust elements of the deal, and the department has made
inquiries about it. -
Reuters
website
What Google knows about you - 11 May
Technically, of course, Google doesn't know anything about you. But
it stores tremendous amounts of data about you and your activities
on its servers, from the content you create to the searches you
perform, the Web sites you visit and the ads you click. It's easy to
understand why privacy advocates and policymakers are sounding
alarms about online privacy in general - and singling out Google in
particular. If you use Google's search engine, Google knows what you
searched for as well as your activity on partner Web sites that use
its ad services. If you use the Chrome browser, it may know every
Web site you've typed into the address bar, or "Omnibox". It may
have all of your e-mail (Gmail), your appointments (Google Calendar)
and even your last known location (Google Latitude). It may know
what you're watching (YouTube) and whom you are calling. It may have
transcripts of your telephone messages (Google Voice). It may hold
your photos in Picasa Web Albums, which includes face-recognition
technology that can automatically identify you and your friends in
new photos. And through Google Books, it may know what books you've
read, what you annotated and how long you spent reading. -
IDG Magazines website
6 ways to protect your privacy on Google
- 11 May
Computerworld website