Do you worry about other C-D users finding out who you are? (person, member)
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A lot of people post carefully to protect their identities while others openly post their photos and talk about personal details. Do you ever worry that the small details you post will add up to enough information for an Internet stranger to figure out who you are? Not necessarily with any evil intent, but do you worry about someone recognizing you on Facebook, through your work, or in your community without having expressly shared your identity?
It seems like just sharing your location, first name, and type of work could be enough to track down a lot of folks.
Anyone who thinks they can assure their own anonymity on this or any other forum (or blog, twitter, tumblr, instagram, etc) is living in ignorant bliss, lol.
Great topic. I try and take a middle ground. I never post photos, but I do give details. Why do you ask? Because I like to share, want to help, and a lot of the CD posts are so bland why post them? Now if you worked at my previous company and happened to read my posts you could figure out who I am probably, but I am not that worried about it since I got the royal shaft from my previous employer. I added my generic metro area not my city in my description, only a few know my actual city.
A lot of people post carefully to protect their identities while others openly post their photos and talk about personal details. Do you ever worry that the small details you post will add up to enough information for an Internet stranger to figure out who you are? Not necessarily with any evil intent, but do you worry about someone recognizing you on Facebook, through your work, or in your community without having expressly shared your identity?
It seems like just sharing your location, first name, and type of work could be enough to track down a lot of folks.
Me personally? No....I live in a metro area of 2 million plus, my 1st name is very common and I can think of 6 law enforcement agencies just off the top of my head. I know there's more.
I don't post many personal pictures. I have met two or three CD members in real life and we had a great time. I reveal when I choose.
You know I have wondered about how could a future HR or hiring manager track me down. I don't use my full name, my first name is not unique, and my computer skills are good, so I can't imagine how even LexisNexis could say Dan is this person without having my IP address and MAC address besides. Maybe the more tech savvy could advise. I will ask some I know. Because you are right if they could track me I would not post such intimate details. Oh and while I do have FB it was hacked into someone many times and so much drivel I just stopped going there months ago.
You know I have wondered about how could a future HR or hiring manager track me down. I don't use my full name, my first name is not unique, and my computer skills are good, so I can't imagine how even LexisNexis could say Dan is this person without having my IP address and MAC address besides. Maybe the more tech savvy could advise. I will ask some I know. Because you are right if they could track me I would not post such intimate details. Oh and while I do have FB it was hacked into someone many times and so much drivel I just stopped going there months ago.
I would not sit around and worry about it . . . no HR manager is going to go to that much trouble to find out every place your IP addy has been across the internet!!!
If some maniac tried to track you down, unless you have given a lot of detail - without an IP address - it would be doubtful he/she would succeed.
No; I hope they *do*. I own a business. Please spend money with me.
But seriously, I think someone would have to hack into CD (a skill I do not have and do not want to have), which would be very unlikely, given their security. Could happen, but there is not enough to be gained for someone to bother, unless it's some annoying teenaged Einstein who is now doing it as I speak...oops....
That's one thing I like about CD; pretty hard to figure out who someone is, unless you tell them. (correct me if I'm wrong).
Sort of. But mostly I don't want my CD posts popping up you google me. I have a bunch of different user names for different purposes. Based on how closely I want people to be able to find me. My twitter, facebook, blog and linked in names all match up with my first name. And honestly, if you know my first name, you'll find me within the top 10 results. I am not hard to find at all.
I share specific elements of my personality online, and they are things I don't mind if the broader public knows about me.
But I was the victim of an online smear campaign a few years ago. A google bomb if you will.
The short version:
Keep in mind this was a work related incident:
1. Got lots of sales pitches from a media company
2. After a series of pitches over a short period of time, I asked them to remove me from the list and sent them some feedback on why I wasn't going to buy. My feedback was honest and direct and possibly a tiny bit snarky. It was directly only to the sales rep. Not anything any average person would be too offended about. You probably would have laughed about the message. [This company formatted its articles in a way that added irrelevant content so they would improve their search rankings and I called them on it]
3. Sales rep forwarded my message to the whole company
4. The CEO emailed me, and copied my team cursing me out, calling me a b**** and other stuff, because I criticized his product
5. Obviously I was shocked by the language and the response so I did what any normal marketing person would do, I complained about the incident on my personal blog. It became my most popular post
6. The company was apparently mad at my popular blog post, so they published a couple of slanderous articles in all of their outlets about me and the incident (with doctored excerpts from the emails.). These articles were republished hundreds of times on their online publications (which was one of my beefs with the company, they'd right an article about let's say potato chips, and then republish it on the social media, computer and food sections)
7. Other people blogged about the incident and their shady business practices (they had a ton of other issues, the smearing article was regular practice for them, so other people started chiming in that the same thing happened to them)
8. I had to come up with a strategy to cover up the bad press under my name. It took about 3 months to bury the stories. They later deleted them, I wish I had screenshotted it. It was really funny.
9. Now most content that comes up for my name is either self produced, or stuff I implicitly approved of.
So I am sensitive about what comes up directly under my name, but not so much if you know who I am. I have very public social media profiles.
I would not sit around and worry about it . . . no HR manager is going to go to that much trouble to find out every place your IP addy has been across the internet!!!
If some maniac tried to track you down, unless you have given a lot of detail - without an IP address - it would be doubtful he/she would succeed.
That's what I believe. If you are on FB, twitter, and using a name close to your own or taking about FB walking out of an interview I could see that, but HR is not NSA.
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