Laraine Cook, an Idaho high school girls’ basketball coach, was fired from her job this week after posting a relatively tame photo on her Facebook profile of her fiancé, a football coach at the school, grabbing her breast. The photo was reportedly posted as part of a vacation album on Cook’s profile and then removed the next day, though its brief time on her wall cost Cook her job. Cook’s firing garnered shock and disbelief in the online community, partially because the photo seemingly didn’t warrant Cook losing her job and also because her fiancé has only received a reprimand from the school without losing his job.
“I wouldn’t be doing anything that I would deem immoral, or not right, or inappropriate,” Cook said in a local TV interview. “I definitely wouldn’t ever put something like that on my Facebook account. … In my personal opinion, I don’t feel that that photo is something to have me terminated on.”
Though Cook’s firing seems ridiculous, her ordeal could’ve been avoided if she had tightened the restrictions on who could see her profile. Now that Facebook is rolling out Graph Search both in the United States and Europe, it’s more important than ever to check your privacy settings to ensure only the people who want to see your profile can see it.
Image Credit: Facebook
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