As a lawyer and a consultant who counsels high school students and job applicants how to protect their digital lives from colleges and employers, I understand the importance of limiting your digital foot print so it does not destroy personal and professional opportunities. Protecting your social media activity from college admissions officials has become paramount in light of Harvard revoking offers to at least 10 high school students because of their online posts, and the recent scandals that have exposed Facebook for massive privacy violations and selling teenager’s personal information to colleges.
To protect students from being discriminated against based upon their digital life, I have created the College Admissions Social Media Playbook e-course to help ensure that high school students personal and private social media information is not used against them during the college application process. This e-course teaches students and their families how to protect their digital lives and have a winning digital footprint so one alleged inappropriate tweet, retweet, like, emoji, meme, LOL, video, or photo won’t lead to a rejection or a revoked offer from your dream school.
For years, I have led the effort to ban colleges and employers from being able to request access to your personal social media accounts. Unfortunately, these laws do not protect all high school students and many colleges are circumventing these protections by deploying social media monitoring companies and Orwellian software to track applicants and their families across the Internet.
Many colleges are secretly inserting web bugs into their emails to enable them to spy on their applicants personal Snapchat accounts and to follow candidates and their families across the Internet. Discussing online your religion, political beliefs, personal activities, or liking social media pages that a member of an admissions committee does not agree with may cause a rejection.
Colleges have never rejected an applicant or revoked an offer because a candidate didn’t have a searchable online profile and they never will because of the major privacy, safety, and security issues inherent with social media.
For years, I have admired how Diana Graber and Cynthia Lieberman have worked tirelessly to grow Cyberwise into the leading digital citizenship program for elementary and middle school students. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that I am offering Cyberwise subscribers a 50% discount on my College Admissions Social Media Playbook e-course which teaches high school students and their families how to protect their social media lives and have a winning digital footprint during the college application process.
This e-course shows how to stop colleges from secretly tracking applicants across the Internet to protect against digital discrimination; it teaches the 5-Step Digital Life Audit Process; it provides tips on how to create and maintain real Finsta (Private) social media accounts; it gives advice on how to respond when colleges demand you verify your social media accounts; and many more important College Application Digital Life Skills.
To purchase this e-course please visit Digital Armour Academy. (The discount code is “Cyberwise50”).
Brad Shear is the leading authority on how colleges and employers are utilizing your digital footprint during the application process and beyond. He is the founder of Digital Armour which advises clients how to protect their digital privacy, safety, and security. His state social media privacy and reputation laws that ban colleges and employers from being able to request access to an applicant’s social media accounts have been enacted in more than half the states around the country. He started his professional career at the National Football League Players Association and has been protecting the digital privacy, safety, and security of clients for more than 20 years.
