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."
I'm a long-term Rocky Horror Picture Show cast member, and I run a web site for our local cast in Austin. I've been running this web site for over a decade now.
Cast members are frequently very interested to see photographs of themselves performing in the show. And since it's Rocky Horror, they're usually wearing lingerie of some sort. At the time the photos are posted, they're invariably very excited about this. Especially because I take pride in my photography, and most people haven't seen photos of themselves prior to this that someone had actually put significant work into.
A few years later though, these same people have frequently quit the cast, possibly graduated from college, and moved on to other activities. They may decide they want to apply for jobs in education, as music minister of a church, etc. They do some vanity searching on Google and are shocked... shocked I tell you!... that the Rocky Horror cast web site is still online and kicking with what had been posted some years previously.
Now keep in mind this is a hobby web site that I do purely for the enjoyment of myself and other cast members. It's done in my spare time, and I've always paid for it out of pocket.
I'm sure I could honor requests to remove all of these photos, but I simply don't want to. It involves a lot of time and effort on my end, to accomplish something that's actively taking away from things I take pride in myself. I get probably a half dozen requests per year on average at this point all basically saying the same thing: "Take down my photos now! You're causing damage to my reputation!". At some point I just had to say to hell with them all and whip up a form letter response saying "Sorry, but I'm just not going to do anything about it".
In fact, it bugs me nearly every day:
A few years ago I was living in a place for just a few weeks and using the computer that came with the room there. Unfortunately, I apparently left my browser with the cookie or whatever that automatically logged me into gmail account. So, some asshole came along after I left and used the opportunity to use my email account to register for some forum that discusses getting Viagra in all kinds of illegal ways. My gmail address is basically exactly my name.
So every time I apply for a job, every time I apply for an apartment or whatever, when I meet a girl etc, I feel like someone's going to Google me and nearly the first result that pops up is all this crap about all kinds of illegal ways of getting Viagra for recreation use etc. It's a nightmare. I've done everything I can to email administrators of the forum (which has now seemed to be swallowed up into other forums so the same posts appear on several different sites) but no one ever returns my emails no matter how much I explain the situation. Due to the nature of my work, I'm very confident this has in fact impacted my career. I don't want to think about things like potential girlfriends, housemates, people generally interested in what I've done in the (scientific) community I work in, etc.
If anyone has any ideas for me on what I could do it would be IMMENSELY valuable to me. I'm very glad this has come up on Slashdot.
Society needs to wake-up and realize punishing someone for what they did 20 years ago is ridiculous. Nobody is perfect. It's like what Harlan Ellison said on Sci-Fi Channel: "People accuse me of contradicting myself because 30 years ago I said this or that. And they're right. That's because 30 years ago I was young and stupid, and now I'm older and wiser and changed my mind. judge me on who I am today, now when I was some young brat."
IMHO just as thre's a 7-year stature of limitations on law, so too should employers have a limitation on how far back they can dig. Anything that predates this decade should be irrelevant.
Sorry for the typos - I'm typing on a mac.
I'm not usd to this keyboard'
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Here is the offending file on textfiles.com:
I found it by doing a search on google for "site:textfiles.com university computer system" and it came up as the first match
The Anarchives
In early march of 1995 I was arrested for "Unauthorized Use Of A Computer". (About 15 years ago)
I was being accused of breaking into the computer systems at the University Of Toronto for the purpose of publishing "Anarchist newsletters".
---------------
Doing a little bit more research shows that Jesse Hirsh is also a contributor to Slash Code:
http://www.slashcode.com/docs/AUTHORS
Create multiple websites about you. In one, you were a beer-drinking guy who moved to the Barbados. Not you.
In another, you authored multiple books and magazine columns. Might be you.
A few more randomly generated ones and some near-look-alikes and you're done. They won't know what to believe. Oh and set a tracker on the websites, so you can see which ones your prospective employer visited (ID them by their IP)
In most years, if an employer turned me down for something like that, I'd laugh it off. I get leads all the time. Then again...
The most common thread I've observed as a long term consultant is that every company out there thinks that their team needs to be "extremely elite" because their product is "extremely important" and therefore their employees need to be "perfect". Every team I've worked with seems to beat their chests with that stuff, mainly because they're so out of touch with the rest of the industry that they don't realize that their little b2b app is run of the mill, that their development team isn't any more skilled than the last team you worked with, and that their management isn't any smarter and their work environment isn't any better than anyone else. When there's a down economy, every company out there thinks they're the best because so many people apply for jobs with them.
My advice to anyone who's turned down for a job in general is to ask as many questions as you can about WHY you were turned down. They'll usually be hesitant to give you any info about it, but they're technically supposed to give you at least a general reason. If you at least know why you're not getting work, you can take that and go after someone who's got something on you up on the net. Asking politely doesn't work, you've got to have your lawyer call that guy to make something like that happen. Asking those questions saved my career...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.
But the poster has not matured. We know this because this mental child asks the question "How do I hide the shit I have done?".
That's quite a leap you just made there, judging a guy's mental state from one paragraph. It is not necessarily "immature" to wish to stop being punished. Heck, my Mom still holds a grudge against me for absent-mindedly leaving three 1/2 gallons of ice cream on the counter to melt -- 25 years ago. Am I immature for wishing she'd let that go? Am I still unable to properly store perishable foodstuffs? I assume you know. But this guy's case is quite different, you say? Please, share the details.
I am not a crackpot.