Beware Your Online Presence 677
Mz6 wrote to mention an article in the NY Daily News stating that an increasing number of employers are Googling their prospective employees during the interview/hiring process. From the article: "'A friend of mine posted a picture of me on My Space with my eyes half closed and a caption that suggests I've smoked something illegal,' says Kluttz. While the caption was a joke, Kluttz now wonders whether the past two employers she interviewed with thought it was so funny. Both expressed interest in hiring Kluttz, but at the 11th hour went with someone else."
"wrote to mention" (Score:3, Interesting)
Very True (Score:3, Interesting)
(by the way, yes I know the html sucks, we're working on a new site that has fully valid code...)
Be Glad Of Your Online Presence (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand...
I recently hired two guys based primarily on their online presence.
I was looking for a couple of people to do support. Both of them applied. I googled them. They both had blogs. Their blogs demonstrated that a) they could write well (their jobs involve providing support via email) b) that they had a bit of personality and c) that they were smart people, passionate about Linux (which is our focus).
I hired both these guys without ever meeting them face-to-face. Being able to google them, see what projects they've been involved in, get a feel for how they deal with other people (e.g. in mailing list posts, etc) helped me start getting a handle on them. These guys got their jobs over dozens of other candidates who had great resumes, but were 'invisible' on the web.
--
We're hiring Linux geeks [rimuhosting.com]
It's not paranoia (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Use an alias. Do not post your last name on... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Everyone. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a very valid point that I haven't heard anyone else mention. Most people tend to use the same (or at least similar) alias wherever they go on the internet. Often times a little digging can provide correlation between a name and online alias. It is sometimes quite amusing what people like to say when they think they are being anonymous.
For example, Googling for my real name will reveal some rather off-color comments about Linux (or Linsux as i called it) as well as many unprofessional rants and raves on mailing lists and usenet. Most of this was from 1998-1999. After that my real name dropped off of the net. Once I realized that these comments could come back to haunt me, I quickly moved all posts under my current alias. Fortunately doing a Google search on my alias returns more hits for a british comic book character than anything I've written with this name. If any employer is willing to go through hundreds of pages of results they can find things that i've said. However, i NEVER put any reference to my alias on any resume, ever.
Re:Simple to avoid. (Score:5, Interesting)
Voter Registration - Hide It (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't know this until recently and was having a lot of GREAT interviews, followed by no callbacks. Changed my party registration and got hired on the very next interview. Coincidence? I think not.
Contact your local County Clerk and have your voter registration information made private TODAY.
Re:Be Glad Of Your Online Presence (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said this, it is a good idea to use aliasses for crap like myspace, political forums and mmorpg's, using your name for these kind of things can only work against you. Just use some common sense.
And no, I don't need a job, but thanks for the offer ;)
My girlfriend played Wow.... (Score:5, Interesting)
My girlfriend played Wow and got a little too cozy with another player. With a little bit of Real World knowledge about him I was able to find out quite a bit about him and his immediate family.
Even dug up a picture that might be of him, she wasn't pleased when I said that as she had never been sent a picture. Seems they weren't that cozy after all.
I'll leave it up to the reader to determine what one can do with such information.
In this case i dumped her, and sent him a message in Wow telling him he should feel free to meet up with her. I've got no interest in her now anyway.
It was rather revealing to toss out information which she knew, but had no idea how I could have found out about. She probably thinks I trolled through all her email, but she seemed really curious as I suspect most of the information passed between them was via Ventrilo (voice chat).
Re:It's not paranoia (Score:3, Interesting)
For fun, I Googled myself and my wife. Turns out my wife's a basketball player, a corporate credit services clerk, principal of some elementary school, a movie actress and all sorts of other things, since her name is rather common. No one's going to succeed in performing a background check on her via Google. Maybe 2-5% of the links turned up on Google had anything to do with her. She simply doesn't have a web presence that stands out.
I, on the other hand, have a comparitively significant web presence and a unique name. I get over 9,000 hits on Google [google.com], and at least most of the links on the first 20-30 pages are something to do with me personally. I've always been aware that anything I did on USENET or mailing lists was essentially "in public," though, and I have no worries that my web presence will have anything other than a positive impact on any future job search I might have. Not that I intend to leave my employer any time soon.
--JoeRe:It's not paranoia (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a dangeroug message to send out there. Soon, you won't allowed to make any mistakes before the expectation of "pefection" is not met and you can't get a job anywhere. People aren't perfect and all the internet does is to show that. It's a dumb idea to use it to measure people. "Oh my, it's a picture of him giving the finger to someone, let's not hire him." No wonder why people are so uptight and jackasses. All because a small minority that aren't as bright as they might think send a message down to their lackeys look for this stuff. What happened to work being an exchange of time for money, not signing your life away like it's become.
My last employer was a huge crook. "You'll live your life when I let you.". Is the message he sent. Every conference call was a forum for him to stand up and say "I'm better than you because I have money. That's why so and so had no right to talk down to me." Meanwhile he was paying people barely enough to survive on a 1099 though we were employees for work that was $40,000/year at minimum. Meanwhile insulting everyone everyday. Threatening to sue me when I filed unemployment. He fires me for refusing to do unreleated work at another site yet tells the UC that I was "self-employed". My previous employer was even worse. So you could see in my first two jobs out of college I've had the worst of the worst. So, my initial impression is worse than it should be. It's been a battle just to maintain basic dignity.
Re:It's not paranoia (Score:3, Interesting)
of course she gets "news alerts" when i "digg" something. how retarded is that.
Because of Kluttz's weed-induced photo, or... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.myspace.com/comeoncolleen [myspace.com]
Quit whining about being blacklisted and take down the juvenile profile - you're 27 now, not 16. I wouldn't hire somebody for a professional position with a webpage like that either...
It's an example of a more general problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been arguing for a long time that completely free and effectively unaccountable speech on-line, particularly when made anonymously, is not necessarily a good thing, and on balance it may do a lot more harm than good. The principled people tend to shout/mod me down, but on this one I think it's the pragmatic view: freedom of speech is not an absolute right, and with that freedom when it does exist must come responsibility for what is spoken. As long as anyone can post anything about anyone on-line without so much as offering any right of reply, never mind (in practice) being subject to the usual legal comebacks in more serious cases, there will be abuses, and the consequences can be very serious, even life-changing. You can argue that the Internet is not a reliable source of information and people shouldn't trust random information for important decisions as much as you like, but in practice it will always cause problems, as we see here.
I've also argued for a long time that archiving of everything on an opt-out basis, as with things like the Wayback Machine and Google Groups, is not necessarily as much in the public interest as the advocates would have us believe. Again, while there is clearly merit in having a record of the general state of the world and useful content that might otherwise be lost, there is also scope for a lot of abuse. Perhaps more seriously, there can be a lot of accidental damage, maybe due to out-of-date information being assumed to be current, maybe because information that was never correct was posted at some stage and later retracted, but the archive didn't pick up the later correction. Of course, it would be best if some information were never on-line in the first place -- quite a lot of it, these days (ask the CIA ;-)) -- and archives that help themselves to content without permission exacerbate this problem, too.
I suspect that in the long run, the abuses will become so great that the fundamental nature of the Internet will have to change. Anonymity will simply not be allowed, with countries not prepared to play along being excluded from the network. Archiving will have to become opt-in. Cross-border regulation will be created to enable people to defend their reputations much more straightforwardly than is the case at present.
It's a shame, but the simple truth is that while the unregulated nature of the Internet has been an advantage in developing it, it has also led to serious problems that, at current rates, will bring about its demise just as fast. I'd rather accept putting my name to my words and standing by my comments than the continued and increasing presence of viruses, spam e-mails, phishing, websites offering incorrect (sometimes dangerously so) information, major crimes like fraud and identity theft being carried out behind the Internet's shield of anonymity, sickos distributing kiddie porn, and all the rest of it. Ultimately, you're never really anonymous on-line anyway, it's just a lot of effort to work out who you. Why continue with the delusion when it does this much damage?
Re:Erm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Simple to avoid. (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for this? My aunt (father's sister) who lived in the same town, had the same first name as my mother and had kept her maiden name had passed away about a week before. It was a royal mess to get that sorted out.
Re:It's an example of a more general problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether it's a "good thing" is completely irrelevant: there simply is no reasonable way of preventing unaccountable speech from happening in a free society. This isn't even a new thing, it's been true since long before the Internet.
I'd rather accept putting my name to my words and standing by my comments than the continued and increasing presence of viruses, [...]
That's simply not the choice we face. The choice we face is the kind of world you are advocating, a fascist, totalitarian world in which ordinary citizens are deprived of the ability to discuss controversial issues freely and openly, but in which viruses, propaganda, manipulation, and crime continue to thrive, and the status quo, a messy mix of anonymous speech and accountability.
The day people like you win the argument will be the end for democracy. It will probably happen sooner or later (as it has in many other kinds of democracies), but I hope I won't be around to have to endure the consequences.
Re:Everyone. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp
Am I correct?
What I think is the best way to handle it (Score:1, Interesting)
How do you stop someone from searching for information on an indvidual, how do you enforce it? Quite possibly, a simple way is meta data - all search engines must comply with meta data blocking. For example, if I contact Google and say that I forbid them releasing links/cached information on anything pertaining to myself, then they must tag each page that is in their search cache that references myself (or handle). When someone searches for my name/handle, it comes back with a message along the lines of: "sorry, but the individual you are searching for information about has requested that their information remain private, please contact Google for more information". This would enable you to check who is searching for information about you, and why, since Google would be required to come back to you saying "such and such is after information about you, do you consent?". Yes, this means more work for Google, but in reality, do I really care? Individuals do have a right to privacy, and should have an online right to privacy as well. I mean, you just can't waltz into your local RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority, NSW, Australia) and look up peoples details, can you? Same with FBI details. Tell me, why can't I just do a google search for something like:
site: fbi.gov and
Because people have a right to privacy. Whether it's online or offline is irrelevant.
Just my thoughts.
Dave
Happened to me, definitely! (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened was, I used to run a very popular computer bulletin board system. Almost 10 years ago, it was seized by the FBI under suspicion of copyright infringements occuring on it. After all of my equipment was held hostage for *2 years*, they decided to drop the whole case and give me everything back. A rather sheepish-faced federal agent actually came by my house after work with his station wagon filled up with all of my CDs, computers, monitors, etc. etc. and dropped it all over in my living room - apologizing for the whole incident (but still making me sign some type of waiver promising to absolve them of all responsibility, so I couldn't sue later). I thought this story was worthy of mention on my web site, since to this day, people occasionally ask me what ever happened to the BBS, etc. etc.
Well, the college apparently googled my name, found my web site, and read everything on it. (My BBS story wasn't exactly "top level" material on my site, so they had to click through at least 2 levels of menus and read 4 pages about it before they hit that part.) They were concerned about the incident, despite no charges ever being filed - and denied me employment based on it! (Only 2 days after the phone call telling me they were "reconsidering" hiring me, I got the standard rejection form letter in the mail, signed by the very guy I had just spoken to on the phone!)
Extremely irritating - because while, sure, I could just censor this info - I think it's a story worth telling. And furthermore, I'm not so sure I want to work for an employer who is that paranoid over something that speaks more about government's inefficiency and blundering than my own character.
But in the end, I was hired as I.T. Supervisor of a business paying considerably more than this community college anyway, so maybe everything happens for a reason after all.
just change your name (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Interesting past, future problems... (Score:3, Interesting)
With more and more stuff being in searchable archives, no one will be anon soon.
Btw, thanks for posting my name though. I was being semi-vague for a reason. I gave readers enough info to look it up (and even a hint how to do it if they were not as tech savvy as most on
Now, how long do you think it will be before what you just did is an actionable offense? Honestly... stop and think about it. I think the day is coming quickly.
But hey, I should have figured someone would come along and do that. In fact, regardless of posting someones legal name on a forum being considered "rude" or whatever, it will happen. You just gave the exact example I would have shown.
The creation of another link of my name to that BS Vampire story.
(Obviously I don't care much... it's good to know my name is semi-clean.. but I would not have posted the parent had I really cared about it)
It's great street cred at the goth clubs though. Shame I am not a LARPer.
(The above post was written while I was feeling slightly snarky about a totally unrelated issue. I am not flaming the poster or anything like that... the tone of this post after previewing just seemed a bit toastier than I wanted)
Re:What is "good stuff"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if the disagreement is the source of conflict between you and your employer, then no you don't want to work for him. You should both be able to cooperate despite having differing views.
Are you proud of what you've written? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is nothing new: the need to balance personal privacy against our urge to debate with and convince others is as old as parchment, and everyone knows that although Big Brother may not be watching you, he's damned sure reading what you wrote. If your opinions are different than your employer's, your union's, or your loved ones', it's sometimes necessary to publish them without attribution. The most common solution for this problem is to publish anonymously or with a pen name: many of America's most famous authors have done so, and that's what I've been doing for years(1).
On the one hand, having a pen name gives you anonymity for purposes of Google searches, and you can even build a reputation separate from your own under the pen name. Be careful with your other hand, though: not having your name online can backfire when an employer is looking for someone with "street cred" in online circles. As other posters have pointed out, experienced internet users are now climbing the corporate ladders and are making decisions about hiring and promotion: decisions that will be influenced by your online reputation as well as your meatspace personna.
What this boils down to is a short question you should ask yourself: "Am I a nice guy on the net"? You might think the answer is "Of Course!", but a few days of research will often change your self image, just as it did mine, and I made up my mind to be a lot more polite after I read some stuff I'd written years before.
If you're concerned about potential employers knowing too much or too little about you, the first thing to do is look at your own posts, especially old ones you've forgotten about, and ask yourself "If I heard this guy saying this into a cellphone while I'm on the subway, would I look forward to going to work with him"? In other words, you have to read what you've written with a stranger's eyes, and see if the words take on a new meaning.
We all know how easy it is to start flame wars or otherwise give offense, deliberately or not, and that's a fact of online life that I hope future managers will learn to account for when they read things I've written in the past. With that said, I'll also say that there's something about a keyboard and not being face to face that brings out the worst in a small percentage of Netizens: I don't know why, but some Internauts seem to think that the online world is the perfect place to vent their frustrations. This is understandable when you consider the alternatives: many Usenet posts would be grounds for dismissal if seen in a company newsletter, and grounds for divorce if seen by your wife!
Long story short: if you use the net as a safe place to play at being nasty and mean, keep your identity a secret. On the other hand, if you're proud of your writing and of your contributions to the net, by all means sign your name.
1.) In my case, there's a special reason involving a developmentally-dalayed child I don't choose to have potential employers aware of.
Re:What is "good stuff"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's an example of a more general problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, you can; people do it all the time. You can also make contributions to newspapers under false names, you can hire people to speak for you, you can distribute pamphlets, and you have lots of other choices. And the people who have done the best traditionally at circumventing anti-anonymity provisions are the government, the rich and powerful, and criminals. When you prohibit anonymity, you make it hard only for the law-abiding middle class to remain anonymous.
You miss my point entirely.
No, I get your point exactly. I just happen to think that you are fundamentally wrong. What you argue for, the kind of traceability and public accountability of on-line communications that would be required to affect computer-related crime would instantly transform us into a totalitarian society.
If not, why do you think the Internet should remain essentially outside the law?
Anonymous communication on the Internet is not "outside the law" right now, and there are very few crimes that don't have a real-world component. Computer crime laws are simply used as an excuse by various groups who don't want to address the real problems.
That'll never happen until people who care have the courage to put their name to what they believe in, no matter how many almost-anonymous posts they make on the Internet.
You must be kidding, Mr. Anonymous-Brave-Guy without a real name. Given your name, your signature, and your behavior, I really have to wonder whether you aren't pulling my leg. Come on--you don't really believe that a pervasive assault against anonymity is a good idea, do you?
Re: Be Careful (Score:1, Interesting)
This happened to me ten years ago (Score:2, Interesting)
It was one of my better writing efforts, I was mildly offended that the guy did not credit me just a little for my prosaic abilities. Oh well, the prospective employer went out of business shortly after not hiring me anyway. In retrospect, I wonder if my criticism of AEFA would have been even for this other business.
Things happen for a reason. I'm glad Slashdot came out when it did, or I would never get another shot at firing off a dig against AEFA and the hedonistic blatherskites that infest its tired walls.