Slashdot Mirror
Best Way To Clear Your Name Online?
An anonymous reader writes "About fifteen years ago, I did something that I've come to regret on a university computer system. I was subsequently interviewed by a Federal law enforcement agency, although no charges were pressed and I have no criminal record as a result of my actions. At the time, I discussed the matter with a friend of mine who went on to mention it briefly in a text file zine with a small distribution list. I've generally tried to keep a low profile online and until recently there's been very little information about me available from the major search engines. Unfortunately, that zine mention was picked up by textfiles.com at some point and mirrored across the world. I've tried to address this with the owner of the site, but couldn't get anywhere. Even if my name in the source file is altered, cached copies will continue to link me with my youthful mistake. Have any other Slashdot readers had a similar experience? What practical steps would your readers recommend to prevent this information from hurting me? I am concerned that future employers may hold my past actions against me should they look for me online as part of their screening process."
Some thoughts:
1. Are you still friends with the writer of the zine? Ask them to send a DMCA notice. Don't know if it would work, but may be worth a shot.
2. Drown out the old stuff. Develop an online presence that will bury the old stuff into obscurity. Register your real name as your user ID on all the sites you post on. Downside: prospective employers, etc, will think you spend all day on those sites.
3. Change your name.
Sorry if this is of no help.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If you consider something at "University" a Youth Mistake. Most people are generally at the age of adulthood since then.
While I agree, anyone who will hold that one and only thing against you would be a jerk, that doesn't mean it won't happen. But it will usually mean you wouldn't want to work with that person anyways. (In the tough economy though, most take whatever job they can find).
And if it's the ONLY thing available on him, it depends on what personally identifiable information is there. Does it include the University and his full name? Or just his first name and the University.
I can think of a handful of circumstances where he could simply say "No, that's not me" if the information isn't solid.
As a Pro Tip: Make a Facebook Account, spend 1 weekend on it putting a few non-embarassing pictures, Change your status to something positive, and never touch it again. It'll get picked up on Google and the images you're tagged in - blamo, that small thing is going to the bottom of the list.
I've seen first-hand at two companies that he's got something to worry about. Not during the interview, but before. At my last two employers it was standard process to do a quick google/facebook check and discard any applicants showing anything remotely controversial as part of their public persona. When you get 500+ resumes for one position, you do everything you can to whittle that stack down BEFORE you start bringing people in for interviews.
I'm not saying I agree with any of it, just relaying my bit of anecdotal evidence.
You didn't read the summary. Someone else wrote his name in a low-circulation document that is now publicly indexable.
This stuff scares the crap out of me. If you live in a small town, ANY arrest will get you in the newspaper.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
There's a bit more to it.
Of course, deny, deny, deny is a wonderful thing. He has other options though.
1) He could bury it so deep in the searches that no one would ever stumble upon it. He could plaster his name across so many sites that he seems like a good upstanding citizen (and search engine spammer).
2) He could build a disinformation campaign. Build up identities with the same name but obviously different information. We'll assume his name is so unique there's only him to find. Now, with 100 profiles on sites and message boards with different ages, locations, and experiences (although all bogus) they'd have to wade through the crap to identify him.
3) Deny, deny, deny. It's still a good option. :) If a prospective employer comes across it, laugh about it. "Ya, I found my name, and saw what that other guy did. It's funny, but no it's not me."
4) Admit to the felony electronic trespass against the university that he was at, and not get the job. :) Ok, I'm just making an assumption on that one, but at some point, especially if there were federal charges, someone's going to track it back to him.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Maybe the unspoken criterion for hiring is "smart enough to not get caught". If you need dirty deeds done dirt cheap, you need people who won't get busted and implicate you in the process.
Certainly, you don't need someone who treats a member of the 4th Estate as a personal confessor. (Yes, if you knew you were discussing your shady past with an internet publisher*, you shouldn't be the tiniest bit surprised that it got out there for anyone who can use Google to find.)
*Yes, an editor for a "a text file zine with a small distribution list" is an internet publisher. Deal with the new reality. Nothing is "small distribution" as long as scrapers, crawlers, and aggregators can find it.
Your Facebook page is not "private". Your blog post is not "private". Your memoir in a "text file zine with a small distribuiton list" is not "private".
"Private" means "we never talk about this with anyone who won't keep it quiet."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You didn't read the summary. Someone else wrote his name in a low-circulation document that is now publicly indexable.
There's no such thing as "low-circulation document" on the internet. If it's there, unless it's encrypted or locked down by strong access controls, it's marked "Distribution: World".
This stuff scares the crap out of me. If you live in a small town, ANY arrest will get you in the newspaper.
So don't get arrested. If you get arrested for something not actually wrong, you'll have a good position to argue it. If you got arrested for something actually wrong, what makes you think you should be able to escape the consequences? (And no, "paid my debt to society" does not mean "trustworthy", "reliable", "rehabilitated", or even "hireable". It just means "completed my sentence and paid my fines and restitution". The difference between those concepts is the reason we have the word "recidivism".)
Besides, if you get arrested, whether the fact is splashed in 72-point headlines on every daily in the world or quietly buried in the police blotter of the county weekly is irrelevant, because you're going to report the fact of the arrest anyways on the application, right where it asks you.
Or are you advocating lying on a job application?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The only way to deal with something like this is to drown it out. There are tonnes of people with my name online, some of whom I disapprove of. So what did I do? Registered my name as a URL, built a decent website and made sure that anyone searching for me found what I wanted them to see.
You can't control what other people post about you, but you can control what you put out there.
but is it legal to deny someone a job opportunity based on an alleged crime for which they were completely pardoned?
Uhh, yes. There is no "right" to a job in the USA. You can be denied for ANY reason except race, religon, or sexual orientation and those are hard to prove.
Why in the world would you think any employer "must" hire someone? Are you kidding me? The USA is a hire and fire at-will country and always has been. It doesn't even make sense to consider whether an employer "must" hire someone they don't want to hire because any employer in their right mind would simply eliminate the position before they would hire someone who is forced upon them. This isn't France.
I kinda-sorta give you a pass because it appears you are Non-US. I'd only point out that this distinction is one major difference between the USA and the rest of the world. There is no right to a job in the USA at all.
?? Tmothy posted something from an anonymous reader. He isn't the person asking the question
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If it happened 15 years ago and you weren't even charged with a crime then you are thinking this is more of a problem than it really is. People who have actually committed crimes manage to get security clearances as long as you are honest about what happened. If it was just an arrest they don't require you even mention it at all past 10 years. And that's for a top secret clearance, much less a job.
Be honest and show you've grown up and people won't care.
Anyone who tells you that life is fair is an idiot. "Should" has very little to do with what people actually do. And if you think you can change that, you're deluding yourself.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Following Forge's ideas are a bad idea IMO.
You should *not* say "he did some stupid things in the past" because that will open you up to a lawsuit if said person can ever track that comment back to you. It's way too vague, and probably none of their business. Screening candidates accurately isn't your job, it's theirs.
The safest things to say to an HR cold call regarding an applicant are either glowing recommendations or "Sorry, but I have no feedback to offer on the person you're asking about."
More data, damnit!
Applications I've seen don't ask you if you've been arrested; they ask you if you've been *convicted*. I'm not sure it's legal to ask if you been arrested without a conviction.
I've seen plenty of forms, in particular for security clearances, that ask if you've ever been "charged" with a crime.
I was beating my head against the wall a couple years back trying to get a job, only to find out that one of my references who told me he would give me a reference, wasn't actually allowed to give them out. I asked every recruiter I had contacted until I found out which reference was screwing me out of work.
Or you can just have a buddy call your references and let you know what they said. That's what I do.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
DO NOT GIVE BAD EMPLOYMENT REFERENCES.
It's illegal in a lot of places, and even where it isn't illegal it can get you and/or your employer sued. Ask your HR department, but generally speaking the answer is to either turn it over to them or to confirm job title and period of employment. Often even if you would otherwise give a glowing recommendation this is all you're actually allowed to do. It's got nothing to do with what you "know" or don't know, it's got to do with whether you're going to get sued for slander. If you're going to say anything bad about someone(presuming bad references aren't actually illegal in your jurisdiction) you better damned well be able to defend yourself against slander(or libel if you write it). In the US that means you have to be able to prove it's true, and even then you'll be out legal costs and your employer will probably sack you for causing them unecessary trouble.
Generally speaking, the only way you'd be even remotely safe saying anything negative about someone is if it was a criminal offense and they'd actually been convicted, and even then if they were later proved innocent you could still probably get sued. It'd also be totally unecessary, since the prospective employer can just do a criminal record search.
When it comes to references, unless you really like lawyers, courtrooms and paying out huge settlements(not getting a job is material harm) then remember what your mother used to tell you. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Confirm employment dates, and job title, and that's it. To be perfectly honest, in these days where you can get sued for damages if you give a good recommendation for someone who turns out terrible, your best off just confirming employment dates and job title even if you worshiped the ground they walked on, believed the sun shined out of their backside, and would have been happy for them to marry your kid.
If these people "Didn't get caught" how would you know of said activities?
"Didn't get caught" means that nobody in authority was able to pin blame on them for it. This doesn't mean that they didn't brag about it to anyone and everyone in their peer groups (or even outside of them). "Didn't get caught" and "everyone knows" aren't mutually exclusive.
Don't ask why you didn't get the job, as that will make the other person defensive. People usually clam up when they feel threatened in some way. Ask for recommendations as to what you could do better as you continue your job search. Most people like to help, especially when someone comes to them for advice or expertise. You'd be amazed at how much more information you get using this approach, even though you are essentially asking the same question.
Only if race, religion, national origin, and (depending on your locale) sexual orientation are part of that opinion.
Thinking of him as a low-life dirtbag who killed animals for his personal jollies and then not hiring him based on that is still perfectly legal.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
The safest things to say to an HR cold call regarding an applicant are either glowing recommendations or "Sorry, but I have no feedback to offer on the person you're asking about."
Actually, the safest thing to say is "I worked with X in company Y during time period Z". It's entirely factual, and is enough to support the person's claim that he worked at a particular place (which may be worth it on its own), but doesn't set you up otherwise.
is "I don't respond to HR cold calls."
First, you get it in writing, and second, you just verify name and dates. Any opinion you give is liable to get you into trouble, so why should you take the risk unless it's your friend or something?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it