In this thread (now locked) there was a discussion about whether it would be ethical for a employer to google a job interview applicant to find out more about them.
I want to take this on a slightly different tack:
I put a page on the front of my blog with all my personal stuff in it, a disclaimer saying “Only click the “enter site” button if you are not in any way professional or personally associated with <my name> or <company that I work for>”. Would it now be ethical to look anyway?
I have a fair suspicion that my employer is going to google my name so I go ahead and create a series of fictional blog accounts detailing what a good guy I am. I even go so far as to create a fictional company which “accidentally” leaves all it’s employee evaluation forms accessible to the web and I give myself glowing review after glowing review.
Assume for the moment that there is no case of mistaken identity because my name is sufficiently uncommon.
You ask about ETHICS from an American company? Puh-leeze… Your plan might fool your average company or PI but that is all.
I assume that not only employers, but others, such as the FBI/CIA/NSA regularly review and perhaps capture and link together posts found on the net.
I recognized this exposure long ago, so have never used my real name on any web postings I have ever done. That keeps most companies and people out of my business. The government, however, has ways and means (both legal and illegal) to trace anything written non-anonymosly back to the poster. Real privacy is difficult to maintain in today’s world.
Most employers now do some background checks, and google is just one more source to garner information. I’m self employed and I recently took on some work for a major company and they hire an outside company to do background checks on my company and emplyees. I was surprized just how much information they had; every address I ever lived at, speeding tickets, the whole 9 yards. But that is their policy and their right.
I think that a company should put this policy information “up front” to all employees, or potential employees. But if they do, hey, you know what to expect. And your blog is public information, just like the details of your divorce.
To create ficticious information to “game” them seems to me to be unethical and deceptive. What they’re doing may be distasteful, but it is not unethical.
Even if they were doing something a little shady, like going through your garbage, I still think that 2 wrongs don’t add up to a right.
I’ve Googled myself (it’s cheap and fun) and every entry related to me (except for the ones about some English guy named “Brian Ekers”), which I guess makes me unique.
Now, if a potential employer wants evidence of my Star Trek geekery, the power is in his hands.
Ha! Just for kicks did a quick scan of some of your postings here. Imagine I was given the task of writing a report up on you. Here is what I found and my conclusions.
You might not want to run for president given how the above minimal inforamtion could be easily twisted out of context…
I’ve only seen parts of Deliverance, though, including that bit with the arrow stuck halfway through the guy’s body, which struck me as sufficiently implausible that I had to ask for SDMB opinions.
And the best movie of the last several years was Shakespeare in Love (which has a fight or two, I’ll admit).
As for black cotton ninja underpants, I own 37 pairs.
