Whether you agree with it or not or even if it’s legal or not, more and more employers are demanding access to your facebook account. No, they don’t just want to be able to see your profile, they actually want your password!
It isn’t enough that you can already find out almost everything about anyone online nowadays just through a basic search online, for employers to demand passwords to your accounts, I think is going a little too far. Next thing you know, they will want to riffle through your home before they hire you. But, that is just my opinion. I would pass over any job that would require that of me.
The reality is, most employers, schools and other institutions are relying on social media and your online persona to make judgements about you. So much so that some people are either staying offline (almost impossible) or creating aliases. I see so many aliases among my facebook friends now that it’s almost annoying.
Aside from doing it yourself, some people who are overly concerned about their credibility are turning to professionals for their online reputation management. These companies charge a fee to provide you with a ‘positive online presence’. They will help you build a custom profile, monitor your online reputation and remove any negative content that shows up, and protect information that you would like to keep private.
Are you at the point yet that you think paying for this service is worth it?
If you are just curious how your online reputation looks, there are of course several free services that you can use to quickly see what’s out there about you.
1. Google – (do you really need a link?) Google your name and see what results you get. See which sites are coming up on top for you. My facebook profile and Google+ profiles always come up first whenever I search my name. After Google, try searching for your name on other search engines (Yahoo!, Bing, AltaVista, Ask, etc). You’ll be surprised at the varying results you get.
2. Reppler – (http://www.reppler.com/about/) is a free service which looks at your image across social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and flags any questionable issues. I always get flagged for bad language, and you don’t even have to be cursing!
3. Reputation.com – (http://www.reputation.com/) they do almost the same as Reppler, but for a fee, they will monitor your status 24/7 and fix any negative results that you don’t want floating around about you. You can still sign up for free though and they will do a scan of your persona for free, then it’s up to you if you want to pay for their other services.
Once you’ve found what is being said about you online and see that there may be some areas that are problematic, then investigate how to clean up your online reputation. There are still things that you can do without having to shell out any money.
And as always when traveling the world wide web, beware of scammers and spammers!
[...] Are You Worried About Your Online Reputation? [...]
Very interesting post, thanks for sharing with us this kind of information…
jennifer recently posted..server data recovery
True. The social media could be a hazard. We must always be careful of what we say to the public. If not, then some privacy settings could do the trick.
Micah recently posted..Forex Material
This is becoming a bigger and bigger legal issue – may people don’t realise that the technique used to improve any adverse reputation is generally to produce more powerful content to push the adverse content further down the search results.
This is ridiculous! I mean how can they demand the passwords? Thankfully I have never really come across a situation, Yes, when they do ask me about my social networking preference, i get away by giving them my LinkedIn URL… I think my Facebook is only for my closest friends and relatives!
Debra Terrell recently posted..click to quote
Very interesting article, i think if you started with the net years ago everything about you is in one way or another online so i would not worry about it…
Interesting post, its amazing how easy it is to have your online reputation damaged.
At work we used to work with an SEO agency who used to do spun article submission. While this doesnt effect my rep in terms of having people find drunk photos or negative press on me it does mean that our agency has managed to associate my name with a whole world of badly written junk and bad seo.
Finding you have had your rep soiled is 1 thing but fixing that when you have 25k bad articles to deal with is hard work!
Keith recently posted..Risks of IVF
A lot of companies nowadays specialize in doing this kind of things.. I mean using SEO to combat bad reputation through online reputation management.. you really can’t blame them though because online reputation can spread as quick as wildfire
Andreas Smith recently posted..Persuasion Resource
This is really becoming quite a big concern. Honestly, I never even realized this was an issue until recently. I don’t think an employer, or anyone for that matter, should have the right to ask for a password.
[...] Cleaning house both in facebook and twitter took some time and energy, but I am glad I did it. They are again more meaningful for me to use and I’m glad that I did it now especially with all the talk about your social media use is being scrutinized by people who can affect your career. [...]
This post is Very interesting and useful also!
I don’t see any reasons why you should not protect your reputation if you are a serious person interacting with people online.
I’ve checked my reputation by Reppler, and turned out to be ok)) No negative feedbacks, no alerts or anything like that.
And I agree with you J., demanding account passwords is way too far!