The report begins with the story of a man, asked by his employer to use Facebook to meet other people in his field.
You also need to know that he's been playing cat and mouse for more than 15 years with debt collectors. He owed the U.S. Department of Education almost $15,000 in student loans.
Within one day of placing some personal information on Facebook he received a call from the Financial Management Service, an organization that's part of the Department of the Treasury charged with finding people and collecting the money that's owed to the federal government.
Collection agencies, like everyone else, are now using social networking sites to track down or keep tabs on people they're interested in.
"It's incredible the kind of information that people put out there about themselves," says Gary Nitzkin, a credit collection attorney with his own firm, Nitzkin and Associates.
...Some of his employees go even further than just searching MySpace, LinkedIn or Facebook.
"My collectors and skip tracers will put their name in to be a friend to the debtor," he says. "And then they can get into their inner circle and talk to their other friends. Find out what they're doing. Are they going boating today — on their new sailboat? Well, guess what? We just found an asset that we can take."
And Nitzkin says that's legal.
On the surface of it, I can tell you there's nothing illegal about it.
However, others have different views and would consider this approach a legal gray area.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
