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Epsilon

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New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« on: June 28, 2011, 11:13:09 AM »
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Riddled with problematic issues and again highlighting the need to keep your data private if you use social networks.

The Consumerist reports: (partial quote)
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New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks, For Up To Seven Years

By Ben Popken on June 21, 2011 1:00 PM

The FTC has given thumbs up to a company, Social Intelligence Corp., selling a new kind of employee background check to employers. This one scours the internet for your posts and pictures to social media sites and creates a file of all the dumb stuff you ever uploaded online. For instance, this sample they provided was flagged for "Demonstrating potentially violent behavior" because of "flagrant display of weapons or bombs."


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Jason

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2011, 11:48:07 AM »
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This is not the primary reason, but one of the reasons why I've removed myself totally from social media!
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blazerfrost

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2011, 06:07:13 PM »
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I've always been of the opinion that if a company uses something like Facebook to determine if you are employable then it is not the kind of place that I would want to work at anyway. But since I'm a student and haven't had the experience yet of desperately needing a job, this is probably a naive way of thinking.
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WHIT3FOX

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2011, 11:40:55 PM »
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hehe, that sure is going to make getting a job alot harder for some people :0 But surley that's a violation of privacy though? like, surley you have a right to private data on the internet??
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Epsilon

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2011, 10:46:35 AM »
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Quote from: WHIT3FOX on July 09, 2011, 11:40:55 PM
hehe, that sure is going to make getting a job alot harder for some people :0 But surley that's a violation of privacy though? like, surley you have a right to private data on the internet??
Yes, but only if you make it private whether it be on a social network or elsewhere.
Many people just cant be bothered to set up their privacy settings properly on social networks. Admittedly companies like Facebook aren't helping by defaulting almost everything to 'public'. That still won't stop someone from impersonating a friend on Facebook (although it's against their TOS) in order to try and gain access to items you have marked as not public.

Why some people do post what they do in their photo's etc. makes me wonder though...
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Jason

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2011, 12:41:31 PM »
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I'll tell you why I have an issue with social media:

I was on Facebook for just over a year, when my wife and I had a massive fight and she removed me from her martial status... the family kept posting comments about this disappearance and reappearance of our marital status.

Then, the douchebags from high school, keep bothering me.... they fucking picked on me shitless at school, and then to come almost 15 years later with a soppy apology (opening up stuff I put behind me) and then me having to endure stories of how they've been wandering aimlessly through life and only landed a decent job in 2005, and that they're not even married, no kids, no aim, no career, etc... I am sorry, do I look like an agony aunt... Instead of being douchebags and fucking around in high school, I studied my ass off.. don't come crying to me you shitheads!!!

Then, there's the fact that I belong to a hacker's group (I am not divulging which one), I do not want people to connect the dots about me, and stuff I might put into Facebook which can be used by people such as Multichoice and others to come after me. I don't care if I am strictly white hat... greedy corporations such as Media24/Naspers/MonoChoice. Not only that, what if my employer has to stumble upon stuff I do outside of work. The company I am going to work for on the 1st of August... could be a biiig problem! They took my fingerprints, the whole hog! I had to do a security clearance!
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WHIT3FOX

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Re: New Service Adds Your Drunken Facebook Photos To Employer Background Checks
« Reply #6 on: July 12, 2011, 11:39:50 PM »
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I get what you mean Jason. I think that we (as the digital community) need to try and mabye set up guidelines and restrictions for the internet and the information on it. I think we as users have an obligation to think before we post the drunken-party picture's on Facebook (Just an example, not pin-pointing them :) ) bu at a certain point background checks can get uncomfortably close to stalking.

Companies have to accept that people have a life outside of work and that they can't be expected to be 100% serious all the time, but as mentioned earlier we as the employee also musn't make a fool of ourselves. It really does amaze me how easily informatin spreads accross the internet...
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