Hidden by-lines: How metadata can link your name to news (and how to change that)
The individual names of communication professionals can inadvertently become attached to public content. What protections are there for communicators who find themselves in the firing line?
Having read the original anonymous comms2point0 blog ‘don’t become the story’ and the follow-ups, I wanted to offer a data perspective - and flag how individual names can inadvertently become attached to public content.
In the early days of my career (early 2000s), I worked in the press office of a major police force. It was a great grounding for me at that stage; fast-paced, interesting, challenging but rewarding.
But obviously you deal with some pretty tough subjects and are exposed to some nasty aspects of life. In the role, we were occasionally expected to drive to the scene of a major crime or serious incident and help senior officers manage media interest.
My boss at the time ensured that the registration numbers of our cars were removed from the standard vehicle registrations database.
It probably sounds a bit Line of Duty, but the reason was to prevent criminals hanging around crime scenes from collecting our registrations, and using corrupt insiders to obtain our personal details, with potentially serious consequences.
This has always stayed with me as a very good example of proactive thinking about risks to a communications team and our safety, given the nature of the job and the seriousness of subjects we all covered and communicated.
Councillors - like coppers - by nature of their roles expect to be out there in the public eye, dealing with difficult issues. And they will receive support and advice - from their political parties, from officers and from the likes of the Local Government Association (LGA) - on managing personal attacks and intimidation.
But what level of back-up is there - and should there be - for communications professionals, who now find themselves in the firing line? What protections might there be?
If we are sadly facing a new reality, maybe I can help a little to mitigate the risk of becoming the story. As a former journalist and PR and communications professional by background, I now spend a lot of my time exploring what hidden data lies within public pages, and how it can be harnessed to reveal insight and drive better outcomes.
Preparing for a workshop at Comms Unplugged earlier this year, I was mining data from the news section of a unitary authority as a case study, and was a little surprised to find clearly identifiable author names attached to many of the news stories.
This wasn’t visible on the page. But with automated collection tools and basic HTML knowledge, I had a list of which staff members had posted what stories over the last year or so within seconds. These included stories of people convicted for counterfeiting and animal cruelty, and updates on cycle lanes that attracted lots of very heated comments.
What are the chances of someone using this type of data mining to find out who the ‘spin doctor’ is responsible for a story and name them? Hopefully small - but if someone has the time, digital skills and inclination to research individuals on LinkedIn, they may also have the know-how, time and motivation to dig for personal details this way.
With just five minutes of Googling, I found at least one other Council which is - inadvertently, no doubt - publishing author names for stories, in the background. And there undoubtedly will be several others.
So here’s my tip. If you’re a comms professional who uploads stories to your organisation’s web site via a CMS login;
- Go to the last story you uploaded.
- Right click and choose View Page Source.
- Search (Ctrl + F) for ‘author’, ‘twitter:data1’ and also your first name and surname.
If you can see anything that looks like your name - e.g. awaddington - you’ll probably want to flag this with your boss and have it addressed.
If you’re a Head or Director of Comms, have a look yourself at a few recent news stories on your site using the above technique. Is any personal name information visible in the background of your own news pages? How do your team feel about that? And do you need to take further action to help stop individual names being associated with stories by technical default?
Solutions may vary, but two potential ways to stop personal IDs containing name information being attached to content are;
- amend your CMS logins (e.g. create generic Usernames for everyone)
- tweak the set-up of your SEO optimisation, often done through a package called Yoast, and exclude ‘Written by’ data.
You may have the knowledge and access to action these things quickly within your own team, or you may need some further support from IT colleagues or even external agencies.
This isn’t a solution to a worrying and seemingly growing issue. Hopefully it helps a bit. For many of you, it won’t be an issue - but all the same, it’s not a bad idea to check what metadata your CMS is spitting out behind the scenes.
Alex Waddington is owner of Whetstone Communications. You can say hello on Twitter at @TheAlexDubya
This post originally appeared on the comms2point0 blog.