Marc Bechtol's facebook post cost him a two semester suspension and ban from the Catawba Valley Community College (CVCC) on Oct 4 according to a CBS report.
Bechtol had to sign up for a specific bank account to receive grant money. He began receiving unwelcome spam from credit card companies shortly after the account was opened which he concluded were directly related. He posted "Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC’s address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them?”on the CVCC facebook page. Moments later he added a post “OK (sic), maybe that would be a slight overreaction,” under his first post.
It was too late. His comments yielded a letter from campus informing him of his suspension and campus ban. CVCC indicated that the post was disturbing and "indicates possible malicious action against the college".
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) came to Bechtol's aid by intervening on his behalf. Rober Shibley, the senior VP of FIRE, found CVCC's reaction to the post to be extreme. He asked the school to put Bechtol on notice and provide him the opportunity to be heard by the administration before suspending him. Bechtol's suspension has been revoked and he is now able to go back to campus, however, he has not done so yet.
So, we all know you can't take back your posts but we can learn from them. What could Bechtol have done to deal with his suspicion about the spam? The best response, ignore the email and delete it immediately. Another option asked to read the CVCC's and Higher One Bank's privacy policy. As a customer you have the right to see what kind of information they're sharing and opt out. It really makes sense to read all the words of a contract before signing anything. My final advice is to create a secondary email account that you provide when you suspect you might get unwanted email. A good time to use this is when you order from an online retailer. Many retailers require your email address to complete an online order. You will get shipment information related to your order but you'll also get regular (unwanted?) email from the retailer. Provide your secondary email account when ordering so you're aware of the shipping information but the extraneous email is not clogging up your primary email account.
I'm sure Mr Bechtol learned from this painful and public experience. Listen to Mom.
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