Mention your companies name on facebook...think twice!

bristol_pilot

Even if you say nothing at all about work, someone can link to your page and make a comment about YOUR work and ...hey presto, YOU may be deemed to have 'brought the company into disrepute'. The only answer is not to use social media at all whilst in employment.

Reverbe

Uncertain wrote: »

As SarEl explained a few posts back that is really not enough. It is much easier than most people think to work out who is behind an anonymous ID.

I don't use Facebook but, as I understand it, unless all your friends on there are "virtual" (i.e you have no contact at all with them in real life) they will know where you work, live, play etc etc. They may well not be as discrete as you would expect and there is always the danger of falling out!

Good point Uncertain. all my Fb friends are virtual and nobody i know IRL even knows i have an aliased fb account

ceridwen

...and the thing that strikes me so forcibly every time I read about companies spying on employees writing on Facebook (assuming they have done so in their OWN time) is how this is going to look to historians of the future.

That is - it will evoke as much "mind boggling" about employers trying to say what words employees can and cannot use "in conversation" in their OWN time as we have when we read accounts of things like Victorian era servants being told "You cant have followers" (ie no dating the opposite sex in your OWN time):rotfl:..

Reverbe

exactly ceridwen. I jobsearch a lot and one of the reasons I am anon on the net and never post anything personal or identifying is precisely because employers search the net for people. I am not racist sexist a drug user habitual drunk etc but I do like to comment on topical items and on topical website forums. There is sadly always something someone will take offence to even something as liberal as my views on gay marriage or choice of sports team and use it as an excuse not to employ me - tho both of which bears little relevance to any job or work.

Uncertain

Reverbe wrote: »

Good point Uncertain. all my Fb friends are virtual and nobody i know IRL even knows i have an aliased fb account

I think one still needs to be really careful if you are in any way bothered about the possibility of an online "anonymous" comment coming back to haunt you.

What generally happens is that people can't resist putting things in their posts based on their real life experiences. After all, if they don't it is just a pure fantasy. Then they tend use the same ID on various forums and it becomes easy for people to find out their other interests.

From there, with nothing more than the wonders of Google, it is often all to easy to work out who they are in real life.

If you have been reading one of the longer and more farcical threads on here recently you will have seen that happen spectacularly!

getmore4less

What generally happens is that people can't resist putting things in their posts based on their real life experiences. After all, if they don't it is just a pure fantasy. Then they tend use the same ID on various forums and it becomes easy for people to find out their other interests.

Best to mix up names a bit

Go to forums you don't frequent and pick up id's in use there.

Messes up the id based searches captures false information.

Also google any name you plan to use

Reverbe

Uncertain wrote: »

I think one still needs to be really careful if you are in any way bothered about the possibility of an online "anonymous" comment coming back to haunt you.

!

Good point I should have added I also never post anything on there relating to my real life. FB is for gaming only.

paulwf

I don't think any employer would be surprised to hear that their employees occasionally let off steam down the pub and whinge about the day they had at work. Only a few mates hear the moaning and the next day it is all forgotten about.

The problem with FB and Twitter is the employee might have a few hundred people in their friends list. Much worse is search engines may archive posts for a very long time. I'm regularly surprised when I do a search for some information on my own company how often google will dredge up old and random tweets I made.

Just as college students now are getting embarrassed by their old bebo profiles I think in 10 years time there will be a lot of people who will find out what an incredibly long memory the web has.