Ever feel paranoid that someone’s spying on you through Facebook? Well, if you’re a student, and you go to school in India, you might just have good reason to feel that way. But don’t worry too much – if the spies go as far as hacking your social media accounts, you could be entitled to as much as £10,000 in compensation – even if you’re fat.

Teacher Spies

A report in the Times of India has revealed the latest underhand tactic by sneaky school officials to keep students in check in the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. According to the report, it seems that teachers in some schools have been making fake Facebook profiles in order to monitor the behavior of their students, after learning that their young charges have been posting “unkind” comments about them and their schools.

What’s more, the teachers are taking their espionage pretty seriously – not only are they spying, but two schools in the city have even punished students after they were seen to be “ridiculing” their teachers online.  Although The Times of India says that the teacher’s spying ‘might’ be illegal, the schools claim that such measures are necessary to stop cyber bullying.

They may have to try harder though, as the students already seem to be aware of their teacher’s subterfuge. Rather than give up on abusing school officials, students are now using code names for their teachers instead, so they can continue the abuse, whilst others have joined the club and began making their own fake profiles as well.

Social Media Insurance

Those students who do end up being disciplined because of the things they post on Facebook might be interested to know of a new insurance product that’s just been made available. Although the policy doesn’t cover spying yet, ALLOW Protect is offering protection against social media accounts being hacked.

ALLOW, which prefers to call itself an ‘information privacy company’ rather than an insurer, is offering data protection services, which include insurance against account hijacking, ID theft and reputational damage.

The idea is that certain people or businesses might be looking for some kind of protection against social media hacking, in which someone logs into their accounts and posts offensive or derogatory messages that can harm their image.

According to Justin Basini, CEO of ALLOW:

“Every internet user faces a certain level of risk that one day a digital criminal will target them or that they will suffer damage to their reputation.”

ALLOW’s service, currently only available in the UK, costs a very reasonable £3.99 a month, and offers a compensation package that includes free legal advice, victim support, and up to £10,000 should your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media accounts end up being hacked.

Facebook insurance is an interesting concept, but one can’t help wondering if ALLOW is setting itself up to be scammed here – it would be pretty easy to have a ‘friend’ hack your account and post derogatory messages about you. It might be ugly, but for £10,000 I’m sure there’s a fair few people willing to put up with the shame.

Get Fat Fast

Insurance sounds good, but a much healthier way of protecting yourself online might just be to quit altogether. That’s because, according to a new study, playing Facebook every day is one of the fastest ways to get fat.

The study, which was presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology in Liverpool, found that those using social media regularly are far less likely to play sports or exercise. Worse still, the researchers found that there’s a direct link to social media use and weight gain – the more you use social media sites, the less active you are and the fatter you are likely to be.

Wendy Cousins, a psychologist at the University of Ulster who authored the report, explained:

“Time is a finite resource, so time spent in social networking must come at the expense of other activities.”

Cousins recommends that people try to limit their social media use to no more than an hour a day – smart advice considering that one of the things ALLOW’s insurance policy doesn’t protect against is your piling on the pounds…