Doesn’t that kind of erode their entire premise as a company?
They already did that. They companies the tools to remove negative reviews. Glassdoor has not been much different from BBB for some time (if not all time).
Not exactly. It’s concerning, for sure, but they’re not actually displaying your name in association with your review. It’s only stored alongside your account. They seem to be claiming that the purpose is to ensure people aren’t providing fake reviews.
It’s only stored alongside your account.
There’s no reason they should have the info and so long as they do it’s possible actors with contrary interests to users (governments, employers, third parties…) can access it.
Nice reminder to delete that account too!
Although it is now called “deactivate”
Rememeber to poison the data too!
Although it is now called “deactivate”
Which is funny, because after doing so they give you a popup messaging explicitly stating that your account is deleted.
Can’t trust them at all.
If you truly want it gone, you need to use their special form: https://help.glassdoor.com/s/privacyrequest?language=en_US
not a user of glassdoor but how do you poison data?
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Companies like to keep posts/comments/other data, but they rarely keep the history of changes you’ve made to that data.
So before deleting the account, replace all the data in it with garbage. Then it wont matter if they keep it.
name: bigdick
Last: daddyunemployed
etc
never provide honest data to these 3p data aggregator clowns
Shouldn’t you change your account info to something fictitious, though?
I am not sure if it matters as long as it is NOT true.
But I can see how making it some what believable might be more effective. Does anyone know?
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The joke was that your name is actually Bigdick Daddy.
Chad joke but it deff went way over my head :(
Before you delete your comments and reviews change them to something very basic and neutral?
If I’m reading this correctly, they’re adding your name to your site profile, but that’s not visible and is not linked to your reviews.
That specificity makes the situation much less terrifying than the title alone would imply.
An accidental “bug” or data breach could cause these names to become public. Given today’s atmosphere of “Oopsie daisies” and hacks that happen with upsetting frequency, this is a very real thing to be concerned about.
As well as subpoenas from lawsuits / law enforcement.
Which they have already gotten, and had law enforcement upset when there was no useful data in there to pursue.
Which would be why it’s such an issue they are adding that useful data to your account against
yourmany peoples wishes and withoutyourtheir consent…
The fact alone that they were storing your name in the first place means that was always possible. Frankly, this isn’t anything to be concerned about anymore than being concerned about trusting literally any private business that doesn’t publicly document their data retention practices and also subject themselves to routine audits. You should be concerned about that though by the way. But my advice is to not wait around for it to become obvious.
They weren’t storing your name in the first place; they’ve acquired a new service ‘blowfish’ for which an account is automatically created for you if you currently or in the past have used glassdoor. Blowfish demands a real name to be used at all. (including to delete your account)
Ontop of this, after linking the two services on your behalf; glassdoor will now automatically populate your real name and any other information they can gleam from blowfish, your resumes, and any other sources they can find, regardless of whether the information is correct (users have reported lots of incorrect changes). This is new.
One gleans information.
One gleams the cube.
Finger missed the n key… Didn’t mean to type gleam
Lol, i appreciate any chance to reference that weird 80s movie!
I’m looking at it from a perspective of intentionality. Careless? Definitely. A risk ? For sure. But the situation is still not as the title implies.
It could be hacked, or law enforcement could subpoena the data. Neither are even improbable events nowadays.
Sure, the headline doesn’t quite communicate every possibility or the complete spectrum of dangers, but that’s not the job of a headline. The job of a headline is to get you to click the link.
Risks that are already described.
The headline does it’s job getting clicks by making it sound like reviewers names may already be public.
If they have the information, it can be purchased, leaked, or linked to.
They do not need and should not have this info, especially without consent.
I was thinking about how this would happen and I remembered when signing up for services using Google login, I’d always get a list of information the website would have access to, including the name listed under the Google account. When I didn’t consent to that, I went back.
Now, is there a line somewhere between strictly getting a user’s consent and the user having an expectation of privacy? Yes, and they may have landed on the wrong side of it.
Suffice it to say, this is one of the reasons I prefer to sign up with an email address.
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As is often the case with sensationalist media coverage
I stopped using the site when they required me to provide data every few weeks in order to see anything on the site. Come on, Glassdoor. It isn’t like I am job hopping or having salary changes every 30 days.
It has become useless for first time job seekers for this reason as well.
I went to my Glassdoor account and the only place I could see my name was in the community part, where people ask questions of other professionals. Some users still seemed to have their names hidden, so it must be possible to do so. My company reviews are still anonymous.
I honestly can’t find any evidence that what the media are saying is happening is actually happening. I feel gaslit tbh lol
Haven’t heard of glassdoor before, but the article repeatedly states that the name is not shown to the employer and that reviews are still anonymous. That is not the issue though. The issue this person and the author have is that there might be data breaches or that there might be information on fishbowl that would link your account name to your real name. And they make out that this is a real possibility. Also they have an issue with the company trying to find out your real name and saving it without consent. They do not say in the article that your real name would be visible right now.
But by you talking about “the media” I guess you are trying to find reasons to further your already present distrust in any media that contradicts your beliefs?
Lol not sure why the somewhat gratuitous character attack there, but whatever.
Well, why would you talk about “the media” and you feeling gaslit by them? Maybe I misunderstood you? Was it meant as a joke?
“The media” is a common term in American English that refers to mainstream news outlets. I said I felt gaslit because the early headlines and articles on this topic suggested that names were made visible, not that they were merely added to accounts.
Regardless, there is no call for personal attacks. I’m sure you can find the maturity to respond to comments you disagree with in ways that don’t involve attacking the users who post them.
Sorry, but where did I personally attack you? And maybe I misunderstood why you referred to “the media” because this gets thrown around by a lot of people like conspiracy or right wing folks. And gaslighting is imo a pretty heavy term where someone intentionally tries to manipulate you into distrusting your own sense of reality. (I know that it is thrown around a lot these days, but that’s what I would associate with it). In combination feeling gaslit by “the media” sounded like you distrust the majority of media outlets and that you imply that they intentionally deceive you until you cannot tell what’s actually happening. But obviously that was just my interpretation of your statement…
I get that you didn’t mean that, so all good.
Perhaps there is a tonal message in your words that you didn’t intend (your native language seems to be German?). This paragraph comes across as dismissing my comment while making a sweeping, inaccurate, and baseless judgment that I “distrust any media that contradicts my beliefs:”
But by you talking about “the media” I guess you are trying to find reasons to further your already present distrust in any media that contradicts your beliefs?
Hard to see how that couldn’t be meant as, at best, a passive-aggressive dig, implying some level of instability or paranoia.
Personally, I hope we go back to our roots in the fight against abusive management policies. Less snark more arson.
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Went to delete my account. Turns out I’ve not to worry.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
(Ars will only refer to Monica by her first name so that she can speak freely about her experience using Glassdoor to review employers.)
Although it’s common for many online users to link services at sign-up to Facebook or Gmail accounts to verify identity and streamline logins, for years, Glassdoor has notably allowed users to sign up for its service anonymously.
The EFF regularly defends Glassdoor users from being unmasked by retaliating employers.
She decided to go through with a data erasure request, which Glassdoor estimated could take up to 30 days.
In the meantime, her name remained on her profile, where it wasn’t publicly available to employers but it could be used to link her to job reviews if Glassdoor introduced a bug in an update or data was ever breached, she feared.
“No one has the ability to see your user profile and the contents within it, meaning no one, including your employer, will be able to see your details,” Glassdoor’s employee wrote.
Saved 72% of original text.
Glassdoor and all other businesses that operate on the “holding companies hostage” model are trash, always have been, and people who use them should know better / expect this type of behavior. They are imo even lower than the Facebooks and twitters of the world.
Not surprising.
I don’t know, holding companies hostage sounds great. Companies already hold employees hostage in many ways (life essentials, healthcare, etc).
When Glassdoor was just about employees holding companies’ feet to the fire by posting about their shitty management practices, it was great. That it became just another profit-generator corporation is the fault of Capitalism, not its specific business model.
I would agree, but Glassdoor didn’t always used to be like this. When they started it was an extremely great premise, and people flocked to it. Glassdoor was to exiting a company as LinkedIn was to entering a company. But they got greedy, they dropped their (very high honestly) morals to try to cast a wider net. They started catering to businesses rather than the people providing the information.
I remember when they started enforcing accounts just to see salaries and companies and knew it was well over then. It used to be free information for anyone to check on a company, now it’s just garbage. I don’t trust the reviews, companies push employees to make fake reviews, and it’s all trash.
Enshittification strikes again
At my first full time job my supervisor specified that I could hang up on anyone who brought up their lawyer, used abusive language, or brought up the BBB.
