How anything you've EVER said on the internet could be seen by employers as Feds approve firm

Daily Mail ^ | 6/26/11 | Fiona Roberts

[Nachum]

The Federal Trade Commission has approved a controversial firm which scours social media sites to check on job applicants. It means anything you've ever said in public on sites including Facebook, Twitter and even Craigslist could be seen by your would-be employer.[Snip]It raises the frightening prospect of any social media posting, even it's years old or was meant as a joke, being used in background checks. Applicants who use online pseudonyms aren't safe, either - the firm uses special software to link those nicknames with real, offline names known to employers.

[tomkat]

Charles' approach would likely prove more gratifying/effective    

[antiRepublicrat]

So? If this were 40 years ago, imagine that you published in the local newspaper everything you now publish on Facebook and Twitter. Does anyone expect some prohibition against prospective employers reading the newspaper? Same thing. If you don’t want it public, don’t write it publicly.

[martin_fierro]

I just wanna go on record as saying that my boss is the warmest, most excellent, most giving humanitarian that Western Civilization has ever known.

love you, man.

[antiRepublicrat]

who would want to hire people that dumb anyway?

Seriously, if they think Twitter and open Facebook and MySpace profiles are private, what can you expect them to do with company secrets? "I didn't mean to give away our million-dollar deal, I just tweeted it to tell my friends what I was up to." and "I didn't mean to cause an insider trading scandal, I just posted the upcoming merger on Facebook and didn't know a bunch of my friends were going to buy the stock."

[Still Thinking]

So, this company is going to do a "collected works" of everything you wrote on the net and SELL THAT INFORMATION TO A PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYER. Seems to me that's a commercial use of someone else's property (your words with copyrights), and you can't ordinarily do that without a release from the owner.

But it could become universal that you are required to "voluntarily" sign such a release with your job application. They do that with other similar things, and get away with it because the courts would just say "Well, if you don't want to disclose it, don't sign, and get a job somewhere else." The courts don't specify where the "somewhere else" is.

[Still Thinking]

Or one could use the CEO's own software to find and publicize everything the CEO ever wrote on the internet...

It's probably hard coded to refuse to search on a group of people specifically listed in the code. Wouldn't be hard to get around, but it'd be enough to trigger the DMCA restriction on altering the software for use in violation of its license. Then they get their friend the govt thugs on you.

[PapaBear3625]

One of the reports, released to Forbes magazine, flagged an applicant for 'demonstrating potentially violent behaviour' because he'd posted a photograph of him holding a gun on his Facebook account.

Pro-2A job applicants will not be considered. The company will not forward info about religion or sexual orientation, but I'm guessing that political orientation will be in the report.

[PapaBear3625]

In the past, some employers have required the applicant to list what blogs, social sites, etc that he may post on, and what his IDs were. ACLU filed suit against the Maryland Corrections Department over their policy of having applicants supply their facebook ID and password so the interviewer could see everything they posted.

Yes, you can choose to omit your FR user ID, but keep in mind that lying on an application can be grounds for termination.

[for-q-clinton]

The article says they have some way of finding you. Not sure how accurate it is though.

But if you use fake names, what’s the point? This sucks as it makes social media now just one big office party that everyone has to attend. All talk will be small talk.

We need FB to step up and sue them or somehow make their network private and change their license agreement.

[zeugma]

The internet has a long memory. I've found posts I made to mailing lists over 15 years ago in google searches.

[BJungNan]

It is pretty easy. Many people use the same fake name for many different activities.

I discovered a local government official that was posting in the local newspaper (online comments section) about what a great job he was doing. He thought he was posting in a way that nobody could find out it was him.

I even found out he was on sex site soliciting for 18 year old boys and describing himself and posting naked pics of himself. Tied it all in to the car he drives from an auto forum and trips he took from a travel forum where he also posted.