If you speak to most social workers they’ll tell you how rewarding it is to help troubled individuals improve their home, work, and family life. However, according to one survey, more than half will also tell you about the potential danger that comes from their profession, particularly due to threats from clients or those related to their clients that sometimes result in violence.
When the job involves assisting vulnerable communities experiencing challenging situations, there is no way to avoid all inherent risk. But the nature of these threats has evolved, and social workers (as well as the organizations that represent them) must be aware of this, and adapt accordingly.
As one social worker told us, the biggest concern used to be a client following him home, and thus finding out where he lived and putting his family in a potentially dangerous situation. Today, that client can just go online and find their social worker’s address with a five-minute Google search.
This has already happened, far too often, and has resulted in intimidation and physical assaults.
A particularly driven individual can take that information even further. In one California community, someone made a YouTube video about his caseworker, with images and information he compiled from research, social media and other resources online. “It was a very scary situation,” she said.
We are also now living in a political and social climate that fosters division and resentment, which can also lead to violence. As another social worker put it, “People became unhinged after 2020’s events, so whoever represents the government or an institution is now a target. We got actual threats and not just threats out of frustration.”
And sometimes social workers unwittingly contribute to their risk level, by not holding to stricter boundaries and best practices in their online activities.
A New Way To Stay Safe: Online Privacy Protection
The social workers quoted above use our IronWall360 online privacy protection service. They joined because they recognized that the internet has created vulnerabilities that did not exist before, and the best way to make sure their home address and phone number is not readily available is to work with a company that has been protecting public servants’ private information for more than ten years.
Since we began providing this service, we have removed more than one million instances where our clients’ personal information showed up where it doesn’t belong. It’s a full-time job, but with our team of IronWall360 security experts and our proprietary software, we know how to look, where to look, and what to do when we find an address that puts one of our clients in danger.
One way or another, that content always comes down.
If you would like to find out more about how IronWall360 works, we would love to hear from you.
