Not that I’ve seen any name-specific ragging going on here. I’m looking at an article from the 'net – I’m sorry, I don’t know how to post a URL – it’s http://www.callaw.com/stories/edt0512k.html. To sum it up here, someone posted disparaging comments about their employer, whom they unwisely mentioned by name, on a message board. The employer saw the comments, and sued the poster as a John Doe. They then subpoenaed records from the message board’s sponsor in order to discover the poster’s identity. The sponsor, in direct contradiction to its messages of assurance to their posters that their identity would always remain private, handed over the identity to the employer. The poster was then fired.
Now, I know the good people at Straight Dope wouldn’t go in for this kind of thing, and I’ve never seen anyone unwise enough to name an employer in their threads here. Indeed, there seems to be a minimum of bitching about work going on at the SDMB. Still, this may not be the only board that some of us post to, and I thought I would pass along the warning. Hold onto those stock options.
I say we should ALL post our employers names and dare them to do anything about it. Sounds like a class action to me. Any legal beagle opinions?
That sucks.
Peace,
mangeorge
I am self employed, think the courts would buy it if I sued myself for posting shit about me on a message board? Course I couldn’t get anymore money out of me than I am already, but it sure would set a precident if I won against myself.
I would truly advise everyone to carefully read the linked article before making up your mind what you think about this issue. They are not talking only about bad mouthing your employer. I could be sued for saying “That sucks”. techchick68, quit picking on me. I’m very tender.
Peace,
mangeorge
Thanks, beatle, for the link repair. Maybe I’ll hire techchick68 to give me some lessons. Something just occurred to me. Since a lot of our employers now have the technology to spy on what we are doing on our computers, maybe even just typing “my boss sucks” while at work is going to get us in a world of trouble. Anybody out there have any employer/computer horror stories to share?
I was consulting recently at a major company on a term contract. While I was there there was a small fuss about the internet. The I.S. staff monitor the network and could see how much people were downloading or receiving in emails. After office hours I.S. would “investigate” suspicious individual computers and workers would be reprimanded and warned if inappropriate material was found on their computers.
Another previous employer recently took away all computer speakers and sealed all CD drives on about 400 company computers to try and speed up their network.
The office administrator of my most recent consulting client cleaned up my computer yesterday and she was amused at the multitude of material, including porno, she found left behind by the consultant that preceded me. This city is a small town and it won’t do his reputation any good.
I find this interesting because I think the vast majority of net surfing and e-commerce is taking place at work and, if fighting this spreads to become standard office practice, it will have a devastating effect on e-commerce.
Related question: How do you clean off the history of where you’ve been off your computer? How can you maintain as little information as possible on where you’ve looked on the internet?
Everything is monitored where I work. How many calls we make and receive from our phone, what we’re looking at on the Internet, e-mail… everything. (I’m at work right now!! :eek: ) I try not to have too much activity on the Internet during work hours because I don’t want to get into trouble. I usually limit it to checking my e-mail and posting to the board and I usually do it on my breaks.
I wouldn’t mention my employer’s name here though… not just for their privacy but for my own also.
As for deleting the history of where you’ve been on the Internet… there should be a History button on your toolbar. Click on it and then delete the folders. You can also go into Explorer and find the History file and delete everything there.
Is there a way to delete everything in the Address bar??
Yes. I know Netscape has an option called “Clear Location Bar” – on my version, it’s in the Preferences screen. Don’t know about IE, though… and I don’t really care.
That’s a question; can an employee of Microsoft be fired or sued for badmouthing Windows?
The internet is already a party line. If everyone else can listen in, why not the person who owns the compter system in the first place?
Security has been stepped up. You should assume your employer can track your surfing. The courts have upheld the employer’s rights to do this.
If you wouldn’t get involved in a hot and torrid affair on a party line, you probably wouldn’t want to visit a porn site on your company computer.
Sounds like my old job working as a software analyst at EDS. They monitored everything: Phones, Internet activity, E-mail, and even the number of files on your workstation. Too many files, and you got reprimanded. I’m all for employers not wanting their property abused and all, but they were quite anal.
You mean like a picture of a man riding a bicycle in the nude? :o
Here’s my story:
When I first joined the SDMB, I used my real name (chalk it up to ignorance, this was the first time I joined an online message board.) One day I posted a message saying how I hated my (previous) job and boss, and a few days later I got an e-mail from a friend saying “wow! are you sure you want to post that on the Internet?” They had done a search on my name and found the thread! :eek: I’m much more careful now.
Please, please, please be careful guys. It’s not just your cache and location bar files. If you’re on an internal network (a LAN) that connects to the Internet, you’ve almost undoubtably got a firewall and proxy. That means that all Internet activities - email, browsing, ftp, newsgroups - that you do can be tracked and viewed if the IS department wants to.
Don’t send/write/view anything that you don’t want your boss looking at. Save it for home.
One bennie of where I work is that the higher ups really don’t care what I look at. I support websites, so I have to have full access to the web.
In the private sector, you can be fired for anything except the handful of issues that the Feds or the states specifically protect you from being discriminated against on the grounds of (i.e. sex, race, religion, national origin, and (in some places) sexual orientation).
So the answer is an emphatic YES.
But now to the fun part:
According to pugluvr’s link, the course of events looks like this:
(1) Real Person says nasty things about XYZ Corp. under screen name of FakeScreenName on Whoopie.com’s message board.
(2) XYZ Corp. files suit against FakeScreenName, then subpoenas Whoopie.com for all their info on FakeScreenName.
(3) Whoopie.com responds to the subpoena by showing XYZ Corp. everything they know about FakeScreenName, usually without telling Real Person that they’re telling XYZ Corp. who s/he is.
(4) XYZ Corp. drops the lawsuit; they weren’t serious about it anyway. All they wanted was the identity of the person who was bitching about them online.
[Misterogers voice]
Can you say ‘frivolous lawsuit’?
[/Misterogers voice]
Good. You know all those conservatives who routinely wax indignant about frivolous lawsuits? Bet George Will and his like don’t say a word about this sort of thing. Any takers?
Can’t speak about George Will but fellow conservative William Safire would likely come down on the correct side of this issue. He has a real bug up his ass on privacy issues.
