"Enjoy your dystopia!"

3 years ago

@kmlefranc: I had to get a background check for my job, and it turns out the report is a 300+ page pdf of every single tweet I've ever liked with the work "fuck" in it.

I came home to a package containing a printout of all 351 pages of it! Obv the dystopia cares about wasting paper. [...] The background check company is Sterling Talent Solutions, and it looks like they contracted with Fama Technologies for this part of the report. [...]

To those asking - I did not give them my handle or permission, I'm assuming they just found this via my (old) name. [...] The especially creepy part is this didn't turn up anything at all relevant or incriminating! I keep personal info on my non-public accounts. But their shitty algorithm means that my "reputation" and "character" is flagged as questionable and sent to my boss. [...]

Though I also liked the "positive flags" section that picked up the words donate and volunteer - most of which were critiques of capitalism and charity culture.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Tags: big brother, corporations, doomed, security

6 Responses:

1. Pavel says:

   3 years ago at 9:05 am

   Foone had a pretty spiffy twitter thread about this: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1223707098237657088

   Regarding this kind of bullshit:
   I once worked for the government. I had to do a serious background check to do it, even though all I was doing was programming websites to serve people old weather records.
   I passed, somehow. But later I found out why...

   It turns out the company that was contracted to do the background checks? They were just not doing them, but pretending they were.

   So when I see that this sort of poor background checking is being done, I'm thinking it's not just weirdly incompetent and authoritarian: it's probably also a scheme to avoid doing actual background checking.

   Actually contacting references and conducting interviews with references? That shit is hard, and more importantly, expensive.

   Setting up a bot to download someone's Twitter likes and run a search for some key words?

   Shit, I could knock that out in a weekend.

2. NT says:

   3 years ago at 10:38 am

   > But their shitty algorithm means that my "reputation" and "character" is flagged as questionable and sent to my boss. [...]

   In this case the "algorithm" accurately flagged someone who would go on to embarrass the company on social media.

   • voidptr says:

     3 years ago at 9:38 am

     Ah, yes, the classic mistaking the result for the cause.

     • NT says:

       3 years ago at 11:10 am

       You can try to paint this guy as some kind of privacy whistleblower but that's not even how he describes himself.

   • RedKing says:

     3 years ago at 11:07 am

     Except that they didn't say a word about the company they were applying for.

   • Joe Luser says:

     3 years ago at 8:09 pm

     probs good to hide behind that 'NT' handle in case some potential future employer decides to run a reading comprehension check