THE case of a businesswoman who sparked outrage with offensive comments on Facebook shows the need for companies and staff to be careful online, experts say.

Nicky Hutt, who was previously a director of her husband’s Bournemouth-based company 4Com, said online that ‘hopefully’ some of the dead in the Lampedusa boat disaster would have been Muslims.

The case illustrates the risks for businesses of being embroiled in a controversy caused by remarks someone has made in a personal capacity.

Jamie Homer, design director for Wimborne-based brand communications specialist RT Media, said everyone needs to ‘self-edit’.

“Everybody’s entitled to whatever views they want to hold but if you don’t want to be challenged on them, don’t make those views public,” he said.

He said ordinary people with an online life had become like celebrities, with their actions open to scrutiny. You need to be ready to account for your actions regardless of whether it’s corporate use or personal use,” he said.

“You see a lot of people make silly mistakes and then within the day, everyone’s demanding someone’s resignation.”

Monica Seeley, who runs the Bournemouth-based Mesmo Consultancy and wrote the book Brilliant Email, said: “You need to be so careful every minute, every day because your internet footprint follows you around for life.”

She said she was currently on a board recruiting an executive.

“My role is to look at everybody’s internet footprint and see what else we could glean about them over and above their CV.

“You don’t know who’s going to pick it up or for what reason and what they’re going to do with that,” she added.