New App Will Scrub Offensive Stuff From Employees’ Facebook Pages

By Eric B. Meyer

The self-congratulatory comments I left below the picture of my awesome seven-story beeramid.
My candid review of Cinemax’s After Dark lineup from Arbor Day 2011.
My plea to George Carlin to go beyond the self-imposed boundaries of seven dirty words.

A new app called FaceWash promises to get rid of all of this from my Facebook account.

Here’s how it all works (according to the folks at FaceWash):

Alerts you to things you may want to delete

FaceWash comes with a precompiled list of words that may be considered offensive or alarming to those viewing your social history. This list spans a broad spectrum of “dirtiness,” from sex to drugs to curse words and more (it even includes some seriously abstract crazy things you might have posted). FaceWash also allows you to input your own words that may not have been covered in our list.

With a few clicks, FaceWash performs a search and alerts you to sections of your Facebook page that you may want to delete.

So, basically, my entire Facebook existence — except for that time I “liked” the photos from my son’s 2nd birthday party. Society’s loss, I suppose.

Intended for recent college grads, this service may be useful to other employees (young and old) in your workplace with a tendency for loose-Facebook-lips.

So, pretty much every Facebook user I have encountered.

2 tips when you explain your social media policy

Therefore, the next time you train your employees on your social-media policy …

You do train on your policies, right?

As I was saying, the next time you train your employees on your social-media policy, pass along two tips from your old buddy Eric:

Remember that Facebook has privacy settings. Explore them and make sure that only those people who can view your page are the ones you want to view your page.
If employees are otherwise concerned about purging some of the dumb stuff they may have posted in the past – like this — consider using FaceWash or otherwise reviewing their Facebook history to delete the bad stuff.

This was originally published on Eric B. Meyer’s blog, The Employer Handbook.

Eric B. Meyer is a partner in the Labor and Employment Group of the Philadelphia-based law firm of Dilworth Paxson LLP . He dedicates his practice to litigating and assisting employers on labor and employment issues affecting the workplace, including collective bargaining, discrimination, employee handbook policies, enforcement of restrictive covenants, and trade secret protection. Eric also serves as a volunteer mediator for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Contact him at emeyer@dilworthlaw.com .