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."
Once its on the net, its on the net.
And I'm an idiot to this day. Any employer who would hold a youth mistake against you is also an idiot. Especially when you can google their name in return... Nobody is free of skeletons, just try not to have some real bad ones.
Shh.
I'm not sure how bad it is, but if someone types your name in google and the ONLY thing they find is that one thing you don't, then it'll stand out. Try to use your name for everything, so that those things appear first in the results.
If you're "John Smith", I think it will be pretty easy to disclaim being the SAME John Smith unless there are a lot of other matching details.
On the other hand, if your last name is "Szczerbiak", maybe you can make a case for wanting to simplify the spelling and change it.
Basically those are the first two options I can think of -- dodge, and go stand somewhere else.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Not much you can do now, in regards to your online presence.
If an employer asks, calmy explain that it was a youthful mistake. Emphasize that you have not done anything like that since, and that you have a clean record.
Worst case: change your name.l
Did you ever consider taking what you did and using it as a reason they SHOULD hire you?
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
Just live with it. A reasonable person can see the difference between a simple mistake years ago (especially if there is no conviction) and a habitual law breaker. I sold alcohol to a minor because I was too lazy to check an ID, and it turned out to be a sting. It didn't ruin my life.
Whale
...posting the fact to a site where a good deal of the readership's instinctive reaction to the posting of sensitive information on the Internet is to find and mirror it in as many locations as possible is probably not the best first step. See "Streisand Effect". Then again, if you are just pretending to be the subject of the text in order to humiliate the actual victim even further, then I tip my hat to you sir. Bravo!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
if you manage to smokescreen your online identity with huge amount of positive material that bears your name (i.e. get your name on a lot of popular projects), with lots of cross linking, you will at the very least bury it into non-existance as far as search engines are concerned.
if it's result number 999 on google, i doubt your average employer will read that far into it, and if they do, the amount of positive things that have been said about you will probably outweigh the one negative result
and i'm not sure of US law in this manner, but is it legal to deny someone a job opportunity based on an alleged crime for which they were completely pardoned?
You just awoke a sleeping giant. As we speak thousands of once idle keyboards are feverishly trying away to unravel the mystery of just who you are and what you did - you even told them where to look. How fond were you of your name?
There is no way you can track down all those bits and alter/destroy them. Regardless fo the legality, it is impossible from a legal perspective.
Go Buddhist, give up everything, change your name, (your SSN will stay, IIRC) and reinvent yourself. Seems to me to be a lot for a stupid text file. As someone who would work at a summer camp, I would disappear 3 months out of the year to the world outside the camp. I'd come back fresh, refreshed and unencumbered. Live off the net for a while and see how really irrelevant it is to the Real World.
or just maybe remove all the link destinations?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Just hack into the server hosting the offending item and... oh wait.
You can always game the system. Remember search engines will only find your name if it is indexed. So all you need to do is create a bunch of websites and pages about yourself that are clean and sanitized as per your requirements on websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace/Twitter, and some interesting blog sites that have high rankings as per ranking systems and high traffic such as Alexa (probably). Perform some search engine optimization on your webpages and profiles such that these sites come in the first page and textfiles.com is pushed back 2-3 pages. No one goes beyond the first page if they find the main stuff in the first few links. Remember that's why Google gave the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
Of course, if someone wants to they can find every detail on you, but you can divert them intelligently by using the internet. Think it over.
First[1], you need to invent a time machine. Then you travel back in time and either convince your former self not to do it or you kill all the witnesses and destroy all the evidence.
[1] You can actually do it last, if you like. Or in the middle. Whenever. It is a time machine, after[2] all.
[2] Or before all. It is a time machine, after[3] all.
[3] Or before all. It is stack overflow near line 5. Bailing
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's just setting yourself up for getting fired later for lying to your prospective employer during the interview process.
I bought a used street sweeper and modded it with an extra tank on the top. I fill that full of white-out that I made myself in bulk from a secret family recipe (what can I say, I come from a long line of screw-ups). Then whenever I put my online foot in my mouth, I run out and hop in my "Eraser" and head off for my ISP's local datacenter... I whitewash the whole place top to bottom, and problem solved.
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.
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.
Yep, that bad ass hacks calculators! Do you know the turmail he could have caused! He should have been sent away for a very very long time!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Bury the text file in search engine results by having a larger on-line presence. Write a blog, submit posts everywhere. Drown it in noise.
Install Ubuntu in Android
How about telling the truth?
It probably happened a decade ago. Even if I did find it I am not so sure that I would put a lot of credence in an old BBS text file from that long ago.
If I was interviewing and had found that I might ask about it.
If I got the answer "Yes I had a little talk with my university about that and they let me off with a warning, boy did I learn from that!" I would probably mark it down as a positive.
If I got a No not me never did that and you started to sweat I would keep looking.
If it was in a position that required a security clearance then you better tell the truth. They will find it and they will go there and find out if it was you. If you lied you will NEVER get a clearance ever.
You did it, it is documented. Odds are nobody will care if you tell the truth. They will care if you lie.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Perhaps he has, but depending on the severity of his college mistake, he could find it hard to ever get another job again. Thanks to the internet's ability to never forget, he's doomed to be repeatedly punished for something he may have already paid for.
I agree.
Once you've matured you can face yourself, ultimately even laugh at yourself. Is it funny, what that stupid kid did?
Any prospective employer will appreciate the explanation that you gave us.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Any prospective employer will appreciate the explanation that you gave us.
That's supposed to be sarcasm, right?
After that you can right a memoir and appear on talk shows. You won't need another job.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
It has little or nothing to do with "society".
Did you rape and murder my sister while burglarizing her house 15 years ago?
If you did, and you get out of jail, I am going to cut your nuts off, first.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Be a man and take responsibility for your actions.
Employers turn down applicants because of photos showing the applicant drinking beer in college. He was interviewed by law enforcement and no charges were filed according to the summary. It sounds like he did take responsibility already. Being denied employment for something trivial isn't "taking responsibility for one's actions," it's being screwed over.
At some point employers are going to realize they're hiring -people- and that all of their employees have had lapses in judgement, and maybe then they'll have reasonable standards. For now though, many seem to think that if their lapses in judgment haven't made it onto the internet, that means they didn't happen, so they should only hire people with absolutely no dirt on their online profile.
First off, to everyone who knows me: This wasn't my story submission
OK, now that's out of the way, I suffer from a related, but not quite so bad situation: I'm pretty much the only Erik Trimble on the Internet (that's not true, but close enough). Google me, and 90% of the first 100 returns point to me, in some way or not (FYI - the MySpace page for "leathercladdemon" isn't me. Really.) There's nothing bad there, it's just that my life has evolved, and having absolutely all of it retained and searchable over the past 20 years allows people to draw incorrect assumptions about me.
This is all the privacy problems that the current young generations seem to be completely oblivious to, and that pundits like to ignore. People's perceptions of you matter, as much as we'd like to think otherwise. That doesn't mean it has to rule your life, but to think that such perceptions don't matter is foolish. The problem with retaining all this data out in the open is that it seriously harms the ability of people to change. And we want people to change. Lots of Very Bad Things happen to society if we forbid people (either legally, or de facto) from changing their paths in life. For just a minor example, look at what being convicted of anything does to one's entire life. It's not good to have complete personal transparency.
I don't have a solution. At least not a simple one. But it needs to understood by everyone that it IS a problem.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Not really. We're in a bad economy right now, and as such employers are extremely picky. It won't always be that way. It just happens to be that way at the moment.
Those with some years on us realize that it'll get better and past actions won't matter so much.
And just maybe this person has learned to moderate his/her online behaviour because of it. That's not a bad thing.
I disagree with that statement. This reminds me of the whole Micheal Vick ordeal when he signed with the Eagles. The man spent two years in prison for his crimes and many people are still punishing him for it. I believed if you paid your debt to society than why should you continue to be punished? Everyone makes mistakes in life... so if you are perfect then throw the first stone.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
As I said in another post, it depends.
Was it a childhood prank gone bad, resulting in some property damage? Was it a clever exploitation of some loophole? That might be a demonstration of initiative, motivation, and creativity. OTOH, he got caught. Does that demonstrate a lack of forethought and an inability to plan ahead?
Was it a drive-by shooting with three people injured or killed? That's different.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Join Scientology. Then claim the files were posted online as a falsified attack by somebody that disagrees with your religious beliefs. The web site will be shut down in no time.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
do you tell people before you put the pictures up that you can't be bothered to tweak a few pages every 2 months when it becomes desirable for the pictures to come down again?
Or set the site up so that none of the pictures stay up for more than 12 months? (If people want them, they can snaffle them while they're still up)
Or why not set up your robots.txt so that only the frontpage gets indexed?
If you put potentially damaging pictures of people up on your website, you need to be responsible enough beforehand to recognise that you will need to 'budget' more time later to take them down again. If you can't do that, don't put the pictures up.
FGD 135
No, just explain and they will typically understand. For example, my minor youporn issue was ignored by my current employer once I demonstrated that the whole goat thing was a result of misleading camera angles.
The problem is that others have taken it upon themselves to take responsibility for him. Or rather, not to take responsibility for him.
Bottom line, if an employer was willing to dismiss you based hearsay(which this effectively is), or even a verified incident in your past that resulted in no charges, then you are better off not working for that employer. Find yourself a job in a small to medium business without HR drones, where you can actually shake hands with the boss during the interview and even have an opportunity to bring up the incident if you feel it would concern them. Even at half the pay, it'll be twice the job. That's how you find employment.
If you're only sending by-the-numbers CVs to faceless companies, expect a by-the-numbers response.
May the Maths Be with you!
Posting your embarassing stories on slashdot is certainly the best step to trying to hide it.
Be a man and take responsibility for your actions.
... and post an article on the web where you do take responsibility, then explain your current position on the issue in the same article.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yep. Everyone who breaks from the status quo should be punished by everyone with an axe to grind in perpetuity forever and ever.
We have enough "innocent" people that we don't need those "guilty" people to help us.</sarcasm>
wow, you are a jerk
Or you could just be honest and say that he had done some stupid things in the past but behaved well during the time he worked for you.
It's no more your job to crucify somebody as it is to defend them.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
About fifteen years ago, I did something that I've come to regret on a university computer system.
EMACS? Richard is that you?
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
Legally change your name to John Doe, or something similiar. Then break into all the databases used for the name change, and delete the information. Just to make sure, kill everyone who knows you changed your name. Burn down your house, your parents house, all the schools you went to, all the places you worked, your classmates houses, the auto license bureau, the Social Security Administration, and anyplace that may have you old name on record or any photos of you.
If anyone finds this after that, you'll just have to say "that must have been another xxxx".
By the way, instead of doing it on a computer, wouldn't a table in an empty office have been better?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
Employers turn down applicants because of photos showing the applicant drinking beer in college.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to work for any place that turned me down because of some brief Google image search. That kind of shallow screening tells me all I need to know about them. "Unfortunate reality" be damned, I'm allowed to have a private life outside of work, thankyouverymuch.
At any rate, it sounds like this guy needs to smother this one little bad brief mention from years ago with a ton of really good, awesome stuff. What exactly are you doing now? Nothing? Is a law enforcement interview really the most exciting and noteworthy thing you've done in the last few years? If so, then maybe that should be on the first page of results when they Google your name.
Be a man and take responsibility for your actions.
That still won't get you the job though will it?
If you had two applicants for a job that were pretty much equal in all respects except that one had been interviewed by the feds for something untoward and one hadn't, which one would you hire? I'd certainly lean towards the one that never got caught for anything... even if he's just as devious, at least he's not dumb enough to get caught!
yea, your an asshole.
No, I want the one that would get caught. I don't need someone stealing from me, I want to catch them. At the same time, I'm not going to force my employees to do something illegal, so their ability to break the law well doesn't help.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Well, in all fairness, it wasn't one mistake, it was at least two. First, he screwed up. Then, after that had more or less blown over, he decided to brag about it.. I mean "mentioned it to a friend who published the details of the exploit using real names". Congrats. You're notorious now. You have your street cred.
If you're REALLY concerned, take comfort in the fact that you are not the only one to ever screw up, and with luck and a long period of time without a history of further screwups, past indiscretions will be all but forgotten.
However, as I see it, you have three options. Either forget about it and hope nobody finds out, embrace it as a life lesson and show how you used the fallout from that event to learn to better take responsibility for your actions.... Or bury it. Publish a huge volume of information to the internet using your real name so eventually anyone searching for you will only find the good stuff and hopefully will get bored before they find that one blemish.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
More seriously: make sure you're okay with yourself if you do decide to appear on certain guitar in the shower websites. You never know which xkcd reading coworkers will say "hey, didn't you appear on..." and be correct.
Yep. Everyone who breaks from the status quo should be punished by everyone with an axe to grind in perpetuity forever and ever.
We have enough "innocent" people that we don't need those "guilty" people to help us.
Convicted Child Murderer: Hi, I'm calling about that ad for a babysitter. Is the position still available? But that was 15 years ago! I had postpartum!
No on has an axe to grind here - they have asses to protect. I'm glad someone is willing to take the risk with people who have fucked up in the past, but a PHB isn't going to hire a malicious script kiddie. A parent isn't gonna hire some lady who drowned her own kids.
The situation presented is not in line with any punishment. It's not like he's forced to register on a cyber crime list for the rest of his life, and have no access to a computer, etc.
What he fears experiencing would not be punishment - it would be a simple, logical consequence.
The point is, there's a difference between saying "Michael Vick should be allowed to play in the NFL, provided any team wants him" and "All references to his arrest, trial and conviction should be purged from the archives"
This guy did some stuff in his past that got him checked out by the feds, and people found out about it. It's up to potential employers to decide whether or not that is relevant to them. I may agree that the past should often just be left as the past, but I don't think that means everyone else has to share my opinion, or be denied the opportunity to form their own. (which is essentially what the OP wants)
?? Tmothy posted something from an anonymous reader. He isn't the person asking the question
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The difference is that the audience probably doesn't care to post the names of the performers. Personally I think you just like being an ass.
Publish a huge volume of information to the internet using your real name so eventually anyone searching for you will only find the good stuff and hopefully will get bored before they find that one blemish.
THAT's why I go for +5 insightful
Just wanted to mention how Slashdot never fails to disappoint.
For the record, textfiles.com has no ads. None. Going to it or not going to it doesn't affect my revenue/income particularly. I don't run that site for money.
But if you'd rather hear a much funnier story about the legal threats I get, please watch my video That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars.
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)
I Albert Walter from Wisconsin, did something similar as you, several years ago, i stole private information from my company (Software Systems, Inc). I, however, didn't make your mistake, i never told anyone or claimed to do it on the internet, because i knew i would be doomed if i did that.
That last paragraph reads like this:
I take pride in damaging people's reputations.
You're a prick, Shawn McHorse. I wouldn't hire you to mow my lawn. Eat that, google.
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.
Bullshit.
If they are in public then too bad. If they gave permission, either explicit or implicit, then too bad. If they where in a situation where it's to be expected by a reasonable person, then too bad.
Trying to hide or change history of ANY kind is a bad thing.
No one is under any obligation to change something just becasue someone doesn't like it. It's thinking like yours that holds things back.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Trying to hide or change history of ANY kind is a bad thing.
And so would denying a job for a stupid-ass reason like the candidate used to be in Rocky Horror. But I could definitely see it happening. And unfortunately, two wrongs can sometimes make, well, a less-wrong.
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?
Recommendations must, above all else be honest in regards to what YOU know.
As the response above suggests you can say "He did some stupid things in the past, but later he worked very well for me, and I think based on this that he is now a high quality person." Yada... Yadd..
Lay the facts on the table along with your opinion.
As for the original topic. The AC's mistake was keeping a low profile online. HR will be suspicious of anyone with no online identity at all. Especially for tech jobs. However. Let's say you apply for a Sysadmin position, and they search on your name. That search brings back a flood of discussions, forum posts and debates, most of them technology related. After the 1st few pages of boredom they will announce: "This guy is a geek and spends his online time in the company of geeks."
An ancient blog post about a criminal investigation would probably get lost in the torrent.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
"...you are presumed to be innocent."
In the eyes of the law, sure. Not in the eyes of other people, not if he ended up basically saying "Yeah, I did it." in print somewhere.
Copy yourself to the clipboard and then delete yourself. Create a new record and then paste yourself from the clipboard and save. You'll then have a new primary key, and references to the old you will be orphaned, or maybe even delete themselves depending on how serious the engine is when it comes to referential integrity constraints.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
True, but social behaviour can - and does - change over time. It is, demonstrably, useful to fight for less-unjust patterns of behaviour - if you've identified one. Is life fair? Obviously not. Can it be made less-unfair, with effort? Yes.
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.
I was not aware people don't have the right to hold whatever opinions they pleased. I don't care if he "paid his debt to society". That means nothing to me, it's a legality about his prison term. You can't force someone to associate with someone they abhor. Michael Vick is a repellent, barely human being and he has a long row to hoe before myself or many others hold him in anything but the basest contempt. I'm not disputing his legal right to work for whomever he can convince to hire him, but I'm also not going to support him or anyone who endorses or supports him either,
Why does that make me prissy and self-righteous?
You not drinking doesn't make you prissy and self-righteous, but judging by the rest of your post, something sure does.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Your blog post is not "private". Your memoir in a "text file zine with a small distribuiton list" is not "private".
Sure. We know this now. How many understood it 15 years ago? That it was not only not private, but that it would be available to *everyone*, *forever*? And not just theoretically available, but readily findable?
Sure, you're using sarcasm, but I think your sarcasm actually reflects the opinion of a large amount of the populace. Why should we hire a sex offender applicant when hey, 99% of our applicants are not sex offenders? Why should we hire Bob hacker, when 60% of our applicants have nothing bad turn up when we Google them? We really don't need those guilty people!
Besides that if you do stretch out your hand and hire Bob Hacker, the Feds just might need access to your email servers to keep tabs on him; theres just no room in the world for guilty people.
The internet never forgets. The offending material will always be there. The best thing to do is to bury it. Become an active participant on multiple forums, everything from albacore tuna fishing to zoology (avoid politics and religion). Use your real, full name. Post as much as you can type. In about a year, a search for you will turn up 20 pages of friendly links, most people will stop after page 3. The offending articles will be stale dated and buried at the bottom of the pile. Post to professional forums the most but also non-professional forums so they see that you have a real life as well. You could also try to publish some articles in professional journals (online and dead tree), they should score higher than forum posts. Good Luck.
Morality is herd instinct in the individual. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 116
Then you'll want to unplug the phone line from your modem. That way nobody can access your internet. Problem solved!
Dude. Never, EVER converse with some dude in lingerie about "mowing your lawn". Or "plunging your toilet". Especially the toilet plunging thing.
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.
So basically, you take pride in getting people turned down for jobs in a shit economy because you won't take a few 10YO pics offline. Wow dude, you need to meet some of these people in a dark alley.
Of course, if you consider yourself such an awesome photographer that you just can't bear to ruin the artistic integrity of your site, you could always, y'know, redact their names.
As for how you got modded "insightful", just... Wow. I hope you just managed to sneak a troll post (or some form of sarcasm I totally missed) past the mods, because if serious, you really do suck as a human being.
As a thought experiment: if your local paper sent someone to the show to take pictures for publication would they get releases from the actors? I'm guessing they would, which would put the performance at least in the grey area between public and private. I'm betting (some of) those performers wouldn't have gone to the opera wearing their RHPS lingerie.
Privacy has a contextual component. In this case the context is a performance made *to a like-minded audience*. You can't separate the context of these pictures from the situation in which they were taken. Publishing them openly is a change in context, and is, rightly, being seen as a breach of the performer's privacy expectations.
If it's really only for you and the cast then put it all behind a membership wall. People inactive for too long no longer get access, but you and your cast can see anything from any time. Maybe even allow past cast members to request access. This has the advantage that it doesn't breach the parameters of the original context.
You honestly do come off as self-righteous from your response. That being said, I don't think that EVERYONE who chooses not to drink is self-righteous. Many people make many choices. Drinking may be heavily woven into our society, but not everyone does it. I know many people who choose not to drink, and don't wear it as a badge to say they're better than everyone else. Self-righteousness is independent of the activity. There are plenty of things to be self-righteous about. take your pick, environment, social equality, sex, race, sexuality, vegetarianism, and the list goes on and on. The point is, if you choose to do ANYTHING you perceive to be good for humanity, or the earth or whatever cause you're fighting for solely for the chance to hold it above others' heads, you've missed the point.
Keeping in mind that a LOT of people did stupid things when they were younger and never got caught or had their name linked with what they did.
I find that the people who hold onto blame the longest are the same people who were the ones that "Didn't get caught" and they almost feel compelled to point the finger to move attention away from their own activities.
Anyway, sad to say but life's like that... Most people are bigoted to some extent and you can't change that... Move from job to job and prove your worth. Do the opposite to what you were linked with. Give people a reason to believe you've changed and use them as a reference.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I never had sex with that woman.
..register more than 600 Slashdot accounts, keep using them until you get Moderator ability, then downvote EVERYTHING here to -1 as to not draw more attention to yourself online.
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.
Of course he is under no obligation. He is still an asshole for it though.
I have never written anything that can be used against me but idiots, who I don't even know, have, and have done so years ago. Sometimes I have been successful having the content pulled but sometimes it is based in other countries. Who knows how it has affected me - no one has ever mentioned it to me, but perhaps someone looking at my resume will see something they don't like and I don't get a call.
So my name is on lists in lots of nice capacities - I patch some program, I help this or that project out. If you can Google your name, and one of the first 50 responses is something bad about you, you're probably in trouble. If a few of the first 50 are patches for some software, you helpfully answering someone's question etc., that is better.
I've succeeded in removing my name from a few places, I suggest you being nice about it, and in some cases, dishonest about it.
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
You are such an idiot for comparing "rewriting history" to "dude dancing around in lingerie."
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
This topic came up in the 90s, back when there was an ongoing Cypherpunks movement discussing how technology was changing society and how to deal with it. Other than of course using pseudonyms and unlinkable multiple identities, there was also the suggestion of having a service that was constantly publishing disinformation about you, so that any bad stuff that was actually true was lost in the noise of internet trolls claiming that your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries and obsessing about how full of eels your hovercraft might be.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How hard is it to simply remove people's name in the page text? Google doesn't (yet) do face recognition on photographs.
You could create a phantom entity on facebook, myspace, etc and link him to the incident. Give the phantom the same name, but make if obvious to anyone reading the profile that it could not be you. It might help if you had your own glowingly innocent profile on the same site.
Sort of like a virtual scapegoat....
Am I reading this right? You get "a half dozen requests per year on average" - or 1 every couple of months - to take down photos, and that's too much work for you?
If you can't take that much time to admin your site, which is minimal, you shouldn't be posting them up in the first place.
Please practice responsible web administration.