Michigan’s 2nd District should be very pleased with Congressman Huizenga’s new website. It’s easy to stay up-to-date with what the Congressman is doing in Washington with the homepage snapshot of latest news and multimedia.
Congressman Mulvaney’s new website provides a sleek, easy-to-use layout for South Carolina’s 5th District.
Rep. Womack’s team launched a great new website that focuses on constituent services and multimedia. A slide feature on the homepage allows a lot of information to be presented in a clean layout so visitors can easily find what they need.
Lately there have been quite a few unfortunate incidents involving legislators and their social media accounts. Whole careers have been lost as the result of a few tweets or an ill-advised Craigslist post. While most, admittedly, have been the account owner’s fault some are result of hacking.
The term “hacking” usually conjures up images of people sitting alone in dark rooms surrounded by monitors filled with indecipherable code, but the truth is that hackers rely on human error to gain entry to online accounts. Whether it be a careless staffer or a public message that contains too much personal information, hackers rarely gain access to accounts without relying on human error. That said, now seems to be a good time to review a few basics of social media security.
First, if you don’t want people to see it, don’t post it. Yes, this seems simple but it seems to be forgotten far too often. This not only means that doing inappropriate things via social media is a bad idea (which everyone should know by now) but it also means that seemingly innocuous information about yourself could give hackers just what they need to gain access to your account. Keep your official accounts separate from your personal accounts and don’t post too much information about yourself in the “info” section in your profile. Status updates, photos, and comments can reveal more about you than you intended to disclose and could give hackers hints to your password. Which leads us to point two:
Passwords are important. If your last name is Estrada and your password is CHiPS, you did it wrong. Making your password easy to remember could also make it easy to figure out, so choose with caution. Use a combination of numbers and letters and don’t choose the name of a child (or other family member), pet, town (especially hometown), district, car, food, accomplishment or any favorite topic of conversation. The best passwords are random series of letters and numbers but those are often easy to forget, too. You can use nouns, just don’t make it easy. If “Jack from IT” calls and asks you to verify your password over the phone, don’t. Never give your password over the phone, email, text or IM especially with someone you don’t know personally. Change your password periodically and DON’T use the same password for multiple accounts.
Be on guard. There are an increasing number of malicious programs that can mine important data from your account and all they need you to do is click on the link that says, “I’m from your district, and I need help!! http://t.co/B98Hf65.” Shortened links make it easy for hackers to disguise the site they are sending you to and some of those sites have been designed to look exactly like Facebook, Twitter or any other legitimate social media site. A good rule of thumb is to NEVER click on a link from a person you don’t know. If you feel the need to visit the link you were sent, you can use link expanders (like longurl.org) to view the full address that was sent to you or use site checkers (like Siteadvisor.com) to view the overall safety of any site.
Also, make sure to read the full text of the prompts that you get from your social media site when applications ask for access. Don’t just instantly hit “Allow Access.” Ever. Facebook, for example, can allow apps to access your photos, a list of your friends, your phone number and address. You could even be allowing the app permission to post on your wall on your behalf.
All with a click.
Update your browser. Older browsers have security flaws that are corrected in new versions (currently IE9, Firefox 5 and Chrome 12). You will not only make yourself less of a target, but you’ll have a much better browsing experience as sites will load faster and look better.
Be careful with Mobile Apps. In early March, Google removed from its Android Market more than 60 applications carrying malicious software. Some of the malware was designed to reveal the user’s private information to a third party, replicate itself on other devices, destroy user data or even impersonate the device owner. Smartphone users should be wary when downloading apps and only have apps that are absolutely necessary on their phone.
On a related note: In response to security concerns, smartphone users are becoming much more discerning about the apps they download. Fireside21 CEO Ken Ward posted here recently about our decision to offer mobile sites rather than gimmicky apps to our clients. Mobile sites are instantly accessible to users on ANY platform and pose much less of a risk than conventional apps. Too many apps also make phones sluggish and unresponsive. The solution? Offer a mobile site rather than an app.
Social media is a great way to connect with your constituents. It is a necessary part of the job nowadays and is usually used well and without incident. The worst thing to do is to try and ignore social media for fear that it might backfire. Driving is dangerous, too, but it’s a lot faster than walking. The usefulness and ease that new technology gives us always comes with added pitfalls, but those pitfalls should not stop you from using social media to the fullest.
In short, the best social media policy is this: Trust, but verify.
We’d like to introduce some new faces on the Fireside21 team. Jeremy Jadczak, our new Director of Business Development, has already done some rounds on the Hill, so there’s a good chance that you’ve already met him if you work in DC. If you’ve recently submitted any custom programming requests for your website or email templates, you’ve probably already seen Adam’s work as well.
Jeremy Jadczak – Director of Business Development
Jeremy is the Director of Business Development at Fireside21 and is primarily responsible for promoting all of our services to offices on Capitol Hill. You have likely seen him down in the Longworth cafeteria or heading in to a meeting with a prospective client in Rayburn…read more.
Adam Whitley – Web Developer
Adam brings a wide range of experience to his position as a Web Developer and Designer at Fireside21. Adam has worked in agencies and as a freelancer handling clients ranging from small start-ups to international multi-million dollar corporations. He enjoys creating fast, attractive, user-friendly sites for our clients and is responsible for making sure our websites look and function their best…read more.
Rep. Sandy Adams’ new website puts recent news items front and center so visitors know what’s going on in Washington and back home in the district. News listings along with the homepage photo and video center highlight the work that’s being done for the 24th District.
As the Fireside21 team continues to grow, we want to make sure that our client support remains top notch. Because of this, we have added a new feature to the Fireside platform. If you’re logged in to the platform, you will see a new Requests link in the upper right-hand corner.
If you click on the link, you will be taken to our new Requests website. This site will allow you to view outstanding requests for your office, past requests (from the launch of this new feature forward), status updates, and includes an area to submit suggestions for our platform. In addition to this new website, we have launched a new email address (request@fireside21.com) that should be used for submitting programming requests and fixes. This new email address notifies multiple team members of a new request and will help decrease our response times!
Take a look around the new Requests site and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions in our chat room or in the Suggestions area of the new website.
