Liza Barry-Kessler, Esq.

Blissdom Conference with FTC Update

I was on a great panel yesterday with Susan Getgood from Blog With Integrity and Kristen Berman from Intuit, here at the Blissdom 2010 Conference.

One of the difficult questions that came up is around the FTC Advertising Guides. As many of you know, Blog With Integrity did a Webinar in November with Mary Engle of the FTC.

In that session, Ms. Engle indicated that bloggers need to put disclosures of any material relationships in the top of a blog post, NOT at the bottom.

Confusingly, one of her colleagues, Richard Cleland, did a different webinar in which he said that that it was fine to put disclosures at the bottom of a post.

Happily, here in the Blissdom Conference audience, we had a 3rd member of the FTC Advertising Practices team, Stacey Ferguson. Stacey helpfully clarified — and promised she’d try to make sure that everyone on the team communicates the same message — the following:

The FTC prefers disclosures to be at the top of the post, but that is NOT a requirement of the Guides.

Let me say that again:

You do not HAVE to put disclosures at the top of the post.

Disclosures still need to be within each applicable post. Blanket disclosures are not good enough. BUT. There is more flexibility in where and how that looks than had been previously communicated.

Remember, the standard is that the disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous.” If you’ve been paid or received goods or services for free, you need to disclose that in a clear and conspicuous way. Forunately, exactly what that looks like has some room for interpretation within your post.

Interview in the ABA Journal

I was interviewed in the ABA Journal!

It’s an article about lawyers being out at work, and I’m in some amazing company. Go read about this great group of attorneys around the country.

Speaking at Blissdom

I’ll be speaking at Blissdom, in Nashville, Tennessee on February 5, 2010!

The panel is called “You Should Know Better: A Blogger’s Guide to Legal, Accounting and FTC Guidelines.” And I will be appearing with the very talented Susan Getgood, one of the founders of the Blog With Integrity project.

I can hardly wait!

Cisco’s 2009 Security Report: Social Media Users, Be Careful!

Check out the Cisco’s 2009 Annual Security Report!

One of the most interesting observations — which should not be surprising to information security professionals — is that online criminals are successfully exploiting social media and social networks, using people’s willingness to respond to messages that appear to be from others whom they know and trust.

Anyone who has clicked on a Twitter direct message URL that turned out to be tweetspam, that’s at least part of what they mean. When someone who doesn’t usually send you a direct message unexpectedly sends you a vague but inviting message, like, “Check out this funny video!” DON’T CLICK ON IT. Do a search for tweetspam, instead, and see how many thousands of the exact same message have been sent all over the twitterverse.

And once you know it to be tweetspam, tweet a warning to your followers. (Without the spam URL — instead tell them “Don’t click on any DMs that say ‘check out this funny video!’ They’re spam and malware!”

Of course there’s a lot more to the Cisco Security Report. Take a look!