February 20th 2010 Wasting Your Time On The Internet
But few of those “crazy kids” appear to notice that once something is posted it can be simply made public, and once online it can live forever. Even if that embarrassing photograph of your nipple ring / kiss with a hottie stranger / lower back tattoo of Charles Manson is removed, somebody else might have copied it, scanned it, or forwarded it to 800 of his nearest and dearest. What folks also don’t seem to think about is that anybody can pretty easily gain access to anything you’ve posted, whether it’s a Facebook login page or a fast and nasty comeback on a Nerds combine forum.
I once posted an answer to someone on an online knitting forum, and dang if some 2 years later, that foolish comment doesn’t surface each single time I Google my name ( which, because I am a contract writer, is typically hey, I need to discover if anybody is reading my stuff ). Fortunately , it was a tame comment. I didn’t insult the other poster’s purling style or let her know to go unravel herself, but what if I had? No enormous deal, right? Perhaps it is. SmartMoney mag latterly interviewed Jeanine DeBacker, a lawyer who counsels employers, about how often they’re having a look at private website pages like MySpace or Facebook when thinking about new staff.
DeBacker cautions firms to be careful when looking online, asserting that if an employer reveals something about a prospective worker that reveals that he or she is in a so-called “protected class,” i.e. A gay person, that the info cannot be used against the candidate.