Internet

I Failed a Social-Media Background Check

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Not me, but online journalism vet Mat Honan. Read the interesting results of a third-party social media data scrub over at Gizmodo.

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Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. Achtung Coma Baby
    July.7.2011 at 2:51 pm

    Okay, Matt, we’ll promise to read that if you promise not to let Nick read what John Cole wrote about the latest Reason.tv video on the D.C. Taxi drivers. Nick has kids, and I don’t want them to lose their father to a suicidal plunge into the Cuyahoga River.

    1. Warty
      July.7.2011 at 3:08 pm

      I’ll take a guess at what it said: Something something Koch something something glibertarian. Am I right?

      1. SugarFree
        July.7.2011 at 3:14 pm

        Throw in a little “they’re all rich white guyz!!!1!” and you are there.

        1. Warty
          July.7.2011 at 3:16 pm

          Being rich is the worst form of racism.

        2. Achtung Coma Baby
          July.7.2011 at 3:22 pm

          John “Malcolm X” Cole

          1. SugarFree
            July.7.2011 at 3:24 pm

            The guy who wrote the article in the comments:

            Freddie deBoer – July 6, 2011 | 4:37 pm ? Link

            Taylor (or whatever your name is), I am a socialist, as much as I am willing to pin myself down to anything, up to and including the part about nationalizing the means of production.

            –
            Kulaks! Kulaks everywhere!

            1. Pro Libertate
              July.7.2011 at 3:28 pm

              Taylor is, of course, Chuck Heston.

            2. Achtung Coma Baby
              July.7.2011 at 3:28 pm

              Search “Nick Gillespie”, “Matt Welch”, or, hell, even “Radley Balko” and prepare to feel somewhat sad.

              1. SugarFree
                July.7.2011 at 3:32 pm

                Oh, I know about those twats. Their hysteric anti-libertarianism would just be pathetic/funny if they didn’t send so many trolls this way.

                1. So Many Trolls
                  July.7.2011 at 3:36 pm

                  You seem rather old to be a groupie.

                  1. SugarFree
                    July.7.2011 at 3:44 pm

                    Case in point.

    2. Matt Welch
      July.7.2011 at 3:37 pm

      Check the top of the blog (ours).

      1. Achtung Coma Baby
        July.7.2011 at 3:44 pm

        Oh, and thanks for correcting me. It’s actually Freddie deBoer who wrote the post.

  2. Sudden
    July.7.2011 at 2:57 pm

    In other words, your drunken kegstand photos are probably fine as long as you’re not wearing a T-shirt with a swastika or naked from the waist down.

    Which is good, because when I do a kegstand, I wear a shirt and therefore am only naked from the waist up.

  3. Joe M
    July.7.2011 at 3:02 pm

    I don’t use the same e-mail for employment as I do for general intarwebz. This confirmed that that was a good idea.

    1. Whoa
      July.7.2011 at 3:03 pm

      Yeah.

      Your personal email address, especially if you’ve had it for a long time, could have all kinds of things tied to it that you’d rather an employer not see. Spend the nothing it costs to set up a dedicated job search email account, and list that one on your c.v.

  4. Aqua Buddha
    July.7.2011 at 3:03 pm

    I periodically kill of my internet personas in annoyingly public fashion, so I’m safe.

    1. Hodor
      July.7.2011 at 3:08 pm

      Hodor!

      1. Eric Holder
        July.7.2011 at 3:15 pm

        Holder!

    2. Tulpa
      July.7.2011 at 3:17 pm

      Web 2.0 Suicide FTW.

  5. Pro Libertate
    July.7.2011 at 3:08 pm

    My comments here are good, because they prevent me from ever being tempted to run for political office.

    1. Sudden
      July.7.2011 at 3:12 pm

      I actually just googled my email for feat that I had at some point in the past associated my job hunting email with my H&R email. I hadn’t. Which is a relief to me and potential clusterfuck for my next employer…. reason, i’m looking in yer direction.

    2. Fist of Etiquette
      July.7.2011 at 3:12 pm

      I thought you were more of a “seize power” type anyway. I got that impression from your comments here.

      1. Pro Libertate
        July.7.2011 at 3:27 pm

        The best way to ensure my freedom is to subjugate you all to my will.

      2. Pro Libertate
        July.7.2011 at 3:29 pm

        And it’s making jokes like that here that prevent me from running for office.

        Not that I really want to, but whenever I get the urge, I think of Hit & Run.

        1. James Ard
          July.7.2011 at 5:41 pm

          Getting elected turns men into monsters. Your kids don’t deserve a dick for a dad.

          1. Jake Boone
            July.7.2011 at 6:29 pm

            Luckily, some of us were already monsters beforehand. Me, for instance… I was a 1950’s vintage Wolfman before I got elected.

  6. R
    July.7.2011 at 3:15 pm

    My ‘official’ web presence is basically nil. Just a boring facebook page I don’t use, and that’s pretty much it. I’ve used pseudonyms for pretty much everything online, and never use my full name (if I do use my name, it’s only my given name, which is boringly common enough that there is no way in hell anyone could tell it’s me without an IP trace).

    So no drunken keg stand pictures of me, bitches.

  7. Libertylover
    July.7.2011 at 3:19 pm

    What’s all this whining about? In the libertarian view, if the government wants to invade your privacy it’s a terrible thing; if an employer does it, it’s fine. Let freedom ring!

  8. Tulpa
    July.7.2011 at 3:20 pm

    I wonder to what extend the opposite end of the social media spectrum can hurt you though. ie, if you have absolutely no social media presence and your name and supplied email turn up no google hits involving you, are they going to be suspicious that you’re hiding something, or that you’re a hermit with no friends who sits around commenting on blogs under a pseudonym.

    1. PermaLurker
      July.7.2011 at 11:02 pm

      Dammit I’ve been outed!

  9. Aqua Buddha
    July.7.2011 at 3:24 pm

    or that you’re a hermit with no friends who sits around commenting on blogs under a pseudonym.

    Hey! I’m right here.

  10. edsa
    July.7.2011 at 3:31 pm

    ,, I paid $32.67 for a XBOX 360 and my mom got a 17 inch Toshibalaptop for $94.83 being delivered to our house tomorrow by fedex. I will never again pay expensive retail prices at stores.I even sold a 46 inch HDTV to my boss for $650 and it only cost me $52.78 to get. Here is the website we using to get all this stuff, BuzzSave.com

    1. Joe M
      July.7.2011 at 3:58 pm

      Wow, I mean, that’s crazy when you think about it.

      http://www.spam-privacy.com

  11. PIRS
    July.7.2011 at 3:40 pm

    edsa is blatant spam. Please get rid of it. It is not even as funny as the AnonnBot. It is just low ball spam.

    1. Pro Libertate
      July.7.2011 at 3:45 pm

      Yeah, but you can’t beat those prices!

  12. Mr. FIFY
    July.7.2011 at 3:57 pm

    Ten bucks says the Obama regime is all for this kind of shit.

    Twenty bucks says the eventual Obama regime replacements will be even MORE in favor.

    1. Joe M
      July.7.2011 at 3:59 pm

      And so on, and so on, and so on…

      1. Mr. FIFY
        July.7.2011 at 4:24 pm

        Eventually, we’ll have so many laws and so much government, we’ll come around full circle to barbarism.

        1. Barack Obama
          July.7.2011 at 4:31 pm

          Workin’ on it!

  13. Fluffy
    July.7.2011 at 4:02 pm

    Here’s what I don’t understand:

    How can they search inside your Facebook profile? I can only screw around inside the Facebook profiles of my friends.

    1. Joe M
      July.7.2011 at 4:08 pm

      Some people don’t have their security settings tweaked properly.

      1. Pro Libertate
        July.7.2011 at 4:38 pm

        Or, perhaps, Facebook and security are two words that shouldn’t be spoken together.

    2. Tulpa
      July.7.2011 at 10:53 pm

      Not that I countenance it, but there are some creative (and legal as no hacking is involved) ways to get access to people’s photo galleries, even if you have no friend relationship to them at all and they have their photos ostensibly restricted to friends only.

      You basically find one person in your network who has left their image gallery open to people in the network, then follow a chain of people who are in photos with each other. Preventing this sneaky method of access requires some serious, non-obvious tweaking of privacy settings which very few people bother with.

      1. Tulpa
        July.7.2011 at 10:57 pm

        I should be more clear: if person A puts an image including person B in their photo gallery, and you have access to person B’s photos, there’s a way to sneak in to person A’s entire photo gallery (even photos without person B). And you can usually find a way to daisy-chain this access if person C has a photo in person B’s gallery, etc.

  14. James Ard
    July.7.2011 at 5:44 pm

    So I should worry that when the host of the Washington Journal reads one of my tweets on the air that someone might see it?

  15. SNBC
    July.10.2011 at 10:23 am

    I can see this causing major issues if employers cross the discrimination line. I think Mat’s article clearly outlines the potential risk in social networking background checks.

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