I'm in that 71% I've said a few bad things about my boss over Myspace. =P One person I work with said "i'm going to add her" and I said "But what about all the stuff I said about her in your comments!" lol
/shrug If you don't want the world to know, dont put it on myspace. Personally, I'm fairly open about everything so If a future employer searched my myspace there really wouldnt be anything on it I wouldnt tell them myself.
Isn't this always in the news? Either way, I'm happy to stick my info up on facebook and myspace. I've not put up my address or my phone number, frankly all of note that anyone can find out is that I play guitar (which I currently mention on my CV anyways, just to show off ), and that I'm gay; which isn't something that I'm gonna hide.
Well that seems obvious and usually I'm relatively harsh about people getting what they deserve but to be honest, I'm sure I've posted things online that at the time seemed reasonable but 5 or 10 years down the road (thanks, Google Groups! *sigh*) are not necessarily things I'd want prospective employers to see. It's hard at 18, 19, 20, etc. to try to project what your life might be like at 25, 30, 35... I think the easiest thing to do is use a pseudonym/nomme de plume (or two or three) when online. I mean sure, people who closely follow what you "say" might be able to figure out that A is really B if they have nothing better to do but there'd be no hard "proof" that A was really B without the person trying to prove it looking like a complete and total stalker, which they basically would be. That's what I do, anyway. Use pseudonyms, I mean--not stalk people online. *grin*
Whats so bad that you put on your my space? I hate (insert teacher name) or you got poked by someone....?
Remember if you put something online (anywhere, not just Myspace), it gets spidered, indexed and stored by search engines and by the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php. Search engines will eventually update their archives (after about 6 months) but the Wayback Machine keeps it permanently. So if you post something about your boss, your teacher or yourself online then regret it later, although you remove it from the original website it still remains in other places. And these are places that those who are trying to find out more about you could search. A good start would be not posting your real name. If you have your real name on one site people could track it through by email addresses, instant messenger IDs, birthdate, website links, things you say etc, to other places where you don't have your real name shown. Photos would confirm the identity once you get there. It is a lot easier than you may think.... You need to make sure there isn't, and never has been, any common details between the info you don't mind people seeing and the info you don't want them to see. The moment you have the same instant messenger ID or the same username in the two places, the link is made and can be followed even if you later delete it. If someone Googled my full name they probably could track me to here, which I don't mind at all. With a bit more effort they could track me back the other way too (I could find my full name from info in my profile here with the aid of just one other website).
IM SCURRED! I never knew ppl could find me that easily lol. I use my emaildress the same one for like....alot of websites lol oh well.
It's not just what you say, it's also the character that the style of the content suggests. A future employer or college probably doesn't really care if you hate your school teacher, but if the page contains a lot of negative comments about people, bad language, a negative or resentful outlook on life etc., it does not reflect well on your character. They may then decide that this is not someone they want working for them.
As proof, some of you have been banned from ### for being under-age even though you didn't say so there. A few of the mods there are really good at tracking people down through the various bits of online evidence.
Worse than that, in the worst case it can also be WHERE you post. Like if the person in charge of hiring is homophobia and happens to stumble across the fact you're gay. And sadly it doesn't have to be some kind of obvious, rampant homophobia. Say there are two equally qualified candidates for a position and the company is gay-neutral or even gay-friendly but the person who's making the hiring decision is just a bit homophobic. Well if they find out one candidate is gay and the other is straight, who do you think is gonna get picked? Now granted, hopefully that is a worst case scenario and I can honestly say that not every employer has the time or energy to start tracking people down on the Internet (I know because I've done a bunch of hiring before) but it's certainly a plausible situation despite its unpleasantness. But yeah, today's teachers and people doing hiring may not have grown up from Day 1 with the Internet but they're a heck of lot more informed about it and adept using it than people were even 10 years ago, because they could easily have had it since high school or college.
See, the trick is to only say things about your boss/teacher/whoever that you'd only say to them in person. Any bosses that I've had problems with know it because I'm very willing to tell them to their face, so if I put it online, it's not a problem to me. The trick is to not hide behind the anonymity of the internet and be willing to say things in person as well as online.
What an epic website! And look at this. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.emptyclosets.com Told ya it was around in 2000.
