As the article What does your internet profile say about you? points out, what we do online “will follow us relentlessly throughout our whole lives, with possible implications on the jobs or financial services open to use in years to come.”. That’s kind of a scary thought. After all, most of us have had an occasional “Here, hold my beer” moment when something seems like a good idea at the time or we’ve lost our tempers and said or done something we later regret. We’re human. Thanks to technology those moments can be caught online and kept alive, long after we’ve apologized, matured, and everyone involved has moved on.
Good marketers will tell you to deal with a negative brand issue once and only once. They will also tell you to focus on producing good content. As individuals, those same methods can be applied to our personal lives. Know what’s out there, don’t try and cover up, be honest, address what you can, then move on to better things. That’s the easy part. The more difficult side of this issue surrounds who has access to and how your information can be used against you.
The U.S. Constitution – the cornerstone of our democracy – doesn’t use the word privacy anywhere, BUT the right to privacy is certainly inferred within the Bill of Rights. We have expressly been given the right to speak our minds, to participate in peaceful demonstration, to practice the religion of our choosing, to express our grievances with the government, to be secure in our homes, to be free from search and seizure without just cause, and to be free from self-incrimination. So the question becomes, does the internet, and those using it, have an obligation to honor those rights?
Participants in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA exercised their right to demonstrate. Pictures of those participants were quickly circulated on Twitter and internet users were urged to call them out. Within hours, not only did users identify participants, they also demanded they be thrown out of school, removed from their positions in student organizations, and fired from their jobs.
In one instance, a man did lose his job. In 2 others, people were misidentified and by the time corrections were made, the misinformation had spread, people believed what they read, and the threats against people who had done nothing had already begun in full force.
While that’s an extreme example, how is it any different than an HR Manager who simply Googles a name on a resume then simply judges that person by what they find?
As much as we as individuals must do our due diligence to manage our online reputations, shouldn’t those searching for information on us be required to do the same?
And without our express consent to a background check…should they be searching at all?
Am I Too Old For This?! 