Do Not Disturb

Have you ever tried to Google yourself? I recently did and was surprised by what I found. Activities I participated in during high school, YouTube videos, and my MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter accounts were starring me in the face as I searched for my results. It never occurred to me how much of me is easily accessible to anyone on the web. Today it seems privacy settings aren’t enough to protect yourself online.

We hardly think twice before snapping a bunch of pictures of our friends and ourselves when we are out having a good time. When we see those pictures a week later on Facebook we may want to untag our self out of the picture just in case a future employer finds it. But is that enough? Everything that is posted on the internet leaves a cyber footprint until it is erased off of the computer. Just because you untag doesn’t mean it is gone forever. It isn’t until recently that we’ve started to monitor our online activity more closely.

I was reading an article in the New York Times by Jeffery Rosen the other day about “the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files.” This got me to think more about what future employers may find when they enter my name into a search engine. According to a recent survey by Microsoft, “75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants — including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.”This is a scary thing for our generation of cyberholoics.

We spend so much time online posting status updates, pictures, commenting on blogs, and just signing up for various accounts that is hard to keep track of our online activity. For all the Twitter users out there, the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be acquiring — and permanently storing — the entire archive of public Twitter posts since 2006. Have you written something on Twitter that you may not want the government to have and possibly use against you?
Before the internet, if you went out to a night club and took pictures we would just have to worry about the physical evident of the photo getting out. Now we are dealing with a totally different monster. Our reputation, future job opportunities, and our right to privacy may all be at stake if we don’t take measures now to control our personal online activity.

Some people can care less about what they put on the internet. In an age of where celebrities are born from YouTube and blog posting, some people dream of being discovered online. Those groups of people would love to have a million followers on Twitter watching their every move. For the other group that would like to be kept out of the spotlight I suggesting researching what information is out their and what you can still erase before it is too late. You may be surprised by what you find.

I wish it was as easy as putting up a Do Not Disturb sign on your door when you want to be left alone. Now even with that notice of privacy anyone can get in.

Do you think the world has got a little too lax about what they put online? Should employers base their decision on whether to hire or fire you based on what they find online? What do you think!?

Ask Ashley