STONINGTON, Conn. – A municipal representative has received a first-hand lesson in how ill-advised automatically “friending” people on social-networking sites can be.Because of his habit of accepting all friend requests on Tagged.com without first assessing their worth, First Selectman Ed Haberek’s profile on Stonington, Conn.’s official website led surfers directly to hardcore porn.
Like many politicians, Haberek employs Facebook, Tagged and Twitter, among other social-networking sites, as means to keep in touch with his constituents. His Facebook page boasts 813 friends, all of them verified before Haberek accepted links to their personal pages. Tagged, a relatively new site, is one Haberek explained he does not “really use,” and so set friend requests to be accepted automatically. He has 11 Tagged friends.
One of them is Bonita L., reportedly a 26-year-old bisexual woman from Kentucky. Bonita boasts 1,058 Tagged friends, one of whom is Haberek. Her personal page contains a reported 14 explicit images and one video of couples in action.
All of that can be reached from Haberek’s profile on the town’s official website. Haberek discovered the problem when another Stonington selectman called him out about the link, in public.
“I couldn’t believe this was on the Town of Stonington’s website that kids have access to,” Selectman William Brown told local newspaper The Day. “I was absolutely shocked.”
Brown, who publicly called on Haberek to remove himself from Tagged, said the offensive content was brought to his attention by a local woman whose minor daughter encountered Bonita’s page via a link from Haberek’s.
That’s when Haberek admitted he has been less-than-vigilant about his Tagged account. He said he does not know Bonita and did not realize the kind of content on her page.
“I wish Mr. Brown would have called me instead of the paper, and I would have taken it down,” he told The Daily.
Haberek said he will continue to use Facebook and Twitter because “[t]hey are tremendous communications mechanisms, and many local governments use them.”
He should keep a wary eye on “follow” requests from Twitter users, as well. The micro-blogging site rapidly is gaining a reputation as the place for pornographers and escorts to promote themselves by following the unwary, some of whom automatically follow everyone in return.
