Social Media Dangers for Risk Management

An American, working for an Australian company, travelled to India during the initial stages of a highly confidential research and development project. Away from his family and friends, he used Facebook to keep in touch. Unknown to him however, a competitor also had access to his Facebook page and was able to work out where he was, when he was there, and rationalised what he and his employer company were doing.

There have also been many high profile "social media disasters" suffered by large companies such as BP's response to the Gulf Oil Spill or Apple's "Antennagate" incident.

There can be very real and serious consequences to unwitting Tweets and Facebook status updates, and other social media communications. Not only can the audience of the communication end up being much wider than intended, but the communication can also be recorded forever on the internet.