Fetch Technologies, Your Forgotten Forum Comments, And Your Next Job (Not)

Remember bragging how you played World of Warcraft on company time three jobs ago?  You posted instructions on how to do it on that backwater forum two years ago.  Yes, people do brag about not working at work.

And right now, your potential new job and huge salary jump is slipping away as the HR Director reads those instructions.  Fetch Technologies is opening up the deep web to companies interested in creating profiles and current workers and potential new hires.

Employers have been searching social network profiles for awhile now.  Employees have been fired for blogging, profiles, and even online Facebook comments.  Even a university got in the act and denied someone a teaching degree for their MySpace photo.

According to their press release, Fetch goes far beyond a simple Google Search.  They go

substantially deeper, says Jerry Thurber, President of Fetch Footprint, a division of Fetch Technologies’ Employee Data Services Group. Footprint automates what would take hundreds of man-hours to otherwise discover. For those involved with recruiting, contracting, screening or hiring decisions, the web provides a vast array of information  if you know what to look for. Footprint is designed to intelligently parse data relevant to hiring decisions

In addition to vetting corporate employment candidates, Fetch Footprint will serve a variety of industry verticals including risk management, background checking, tax credit services, recruiting, applicant tracking, tenant screening, job fit assessments, human resources management and benefit services. “If information about people is critical to your business, Fetch Footprint will find it and deliver it in a way you can use it,” adds Thurber.

Of course, you have no idea that Fetch Technologies is actually finding and reporting.  Careersthatdontsuck recommends “Stop writing dirty, silly things on the walls of your friends’ Facebook pages.  Stop posting half-naked photos of yourself on your trip to Greece on your MySpace pages.“  Unfortunately, Fetch will “scour public-data sources and lurk on social/professional networking sites to gather information” so its more than just keeping yourself squeaky clean.

Fetch could always including sites like Juicy Campus in their mix.  Unfortunately, services like Fetch make it impossible for individuals to fight back.

With Fetch there are serious issues.  Mistakes can be made – bad data is not a new problem.  Problems with confusing one person with another, of “poisoning the well” by pretending to be someone else when commenting, and even creating fake profiles and comments to ruin someone.  Since Fetch reports what they find to the company, not the individual, there is no individual protection from fraud, libel, or defamation.  On top of everything else, services like Fetch could make discrimination lawsuits practically impossible, since alternative reasons for any negative action can be planted and then “discovered” by Fetch and other tools.

And their isn’t much an individual can do right now.  Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects providers or users of interactive computer services from liability in order to encourage robust debate in online discussions.  Privacy rights like those proposed by Senator Clinton just a few years ago are a good start.  Donald Carrington Davis, in “MySpace Isn’t Your Space” suggests “the law must expand to ensure users of these websites adequate protection from unfair, illegal or arbitrary employment decisions.”

Anyone can be a victim – and Federal law must be updated to make reports such as those generated by Fetch Footprint available to their subjects, not simply their buyers.  Fetch says they are “on target to double in size over the next two years.” Support online privacy now- or you may be left with just a lousy t-shirt.