The cost of a Facebook faux pas

It doesn't need to be you

I have been a victim of an online stalker over the past year. After I sent a girl away with her unwanted advances, she went on an stalking spree.

Up until then I had kept a lot of personal information available online as I considered the risks of getting unwanted attention vastly outweighed by the usefulness of letting people contact me if they knew me. That had become a mistake.

Googling my own name has now become a regular activity to see what has been posted about me, with requests for removal being rapidly handled by photobucket and myspace. Pages included pictures of myself with accompaining wording suggesting I was romantically involved with the girl, a myspace page set up as if I had written it, with our photos side by side declaring my adoration for her. There was one facebook photo which did have both of us in it, and I was unable to untag myself (as I was no longer a "friend" of the person who had the photo online) and had to ask facebook to remove the tag on my behalf.

In such situations companies do seem to respond quickly and effectively to remove unwanted pages - but as a freelance contractor I can expect to be googled at any time by a potential client, so this is very important.

It's not just what you write online, but what someone else can write online using your name that you need to worry about. The internet can be a very dangerous place...

By SomeRandomGuy on 28 Dec 2009

Control is a fleeting thing, anyway...

My brother in law was struck off the BMA's register - for ten seconds. Afterwards, he remarked that we all have two reputations: th eone we take to job interviews, and the one we don't own, kept up by other people. Paying too much attention to what happens on-line is a mistake, both in job interviews and socially: in my case if you google my name you will come across a voiceover artist and Disk Jockey in Kansas, and a *very* gay leatherman model. Such is the nature of reputations and those who trouble themselves with such things, that both of these jobs have been attributed to me, by careless Googlers!

By Steve_Cassidy on 3 Jan 2010

TL;DRA

The internet is about being "anon". Learn it, Know it, Live it.

By storm311 on 5 Jan 2010

TL;DRA

The internet is about being "anon". Learn it, Know it, Live it.

By storm311 on 5 Jan 2010

If you Google my real name - I am a porn star

Mark

By mprltd on 15 Jan 2010