Anonymous review site Glassdoor now consults public sources to identify users.
Monica joined Glassdoor about 10 years ago, she said, leaving a few reviews for her employers, taking advantage of other employees’ reviews when considering new opportunities, and hoping to help others survey their job options. This month, though, she abruptly deleted her account after she contacted Glassdoor support to request help removing information from her account. She never expected that instead of removing information, Glassdoor’s support team would take the real name that she provided in her support email and add it to her Glassdoor profile—despite Monica repeatedly and explicitly not consenting to Glassdoor storing her real name.
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. But in 2021, Glassdoor acquired Fishbowl, a professional networking app that integrated with Glassdoor last July. This acquisition meant that every Glassdoor user was automatically signed up for a Fishbowl account. And because Fishbowl requires users to verify their identities, Glassdoor’s terms of service changed to require all users to be verified.
(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.
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Wtf does that last bit mean? Also, are there alternatives, that was a good resource.
What a stupid decision. I don’t know how anyone thought this was a good idea unless they intentionally killed their own product for short-term gain. It’s gotta be that. Because that’s so much of modern capitalism. See Boeing’s strategy.
I just went in there to make a new account, and they want real name and salary before you can do much. (I work for a public university, so my salary is public record, but even so I just quit out. Too invasive.)
Monica told Ars that Glassdoor deleted her data in a few days, much faster than the 30-day estimate. The process to request data erasure was “a little unclear but not too hard,” Monica said. But the process of deleting her Fishbowl account was less clear.
Glassdoor’s support team told Monica that the only way to delete information from her Fishbowl account was to “download the Fishbowl app and log in with either a social connection, your work email, or phone number to gain access to your account.”
This sounds illegal.This should be illegal
also the temerity of the glassdoor manager, responding to her anger about their updating her profile with her real name without her consent
That they stole from an email she sent in an attempt to DELETE her account.
Ooh just listen to him:
“I stand behind the decision that your name has to be placed on your profile and it cannot be reverted back to just your initials or nullified/anonymized from the platform,” Glassdoor’s manager wrote, confirming that Monica’s case was now considered closed. “I am sorry that we disagree on this issue. We treat all users equally when it comes to what is eligible to be placed on the profile and what is not, but we know that there are times our users, such as yourself, may not always agree with us.”
It should be illegal for a company to sign you up for an account on any other platform than the one you made the account for.
If I sign up for Facebook I don’t want to have an Instagram account, or vice versa.
If they want to integrate everything then put it all under one platform name. If they need to you have a “Meta” account to use Facebook and Instagram, then you at least know you can delete your meta account information and it won’t show up in two different places. One centralized place for your information.
Every corporation is destined to turn into some kind of deadbeat dad. They show up 8 years later because you find out they’ve been using your social security number to buy crypto.
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It sounds to me like Glassdoor doesn’t understand their own product.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
(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.
The original article contains 586 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Account data deletion request page: https://help.glassdoor.com/s/privacyrequest?language=en_US
Wtf does that last bit mean? Also, are there alternatives, that was a good resource.
No idea.
Sounds like doublespeak to me. “we will grant your request except for where we won’t, because of reasons affecting x y and z, but not condition a”
What a stupid decision. I don’t know how anyone thought this was a good idea unless they intentionally killed their own product for short-term gain. It’s gotta be that. Because that’s so much of modern capitalism. See Boeing’s strategy.
deleted by creator
I just went in there to make a new account, and they want real name and salary before you can do much. (I work for a public university, so my salary is public record, but even so I just quit out. Too invasive.)
This sounds illegal.This should be illegal
also the temerity of the glassdoor manager, responding to her anger about their updating her profile with her real name without her consent That they stole from an email she sent in an attempt to DELETE her account. Ooh just listen to him:
Ooooooh >~<
It should be illegal for a company to sign you up for an account on any other platform than the one you made the account for.
If I sign up for Facebook I don’t want to have an Instagram account, or vice versa.
If they want to integrate everything then put it all under one platform name. If they need to you have a “Meta” account to use Facebook and Instagram, then you at least know you can delete your meta account information and it won’t show up in two different places. One centralized place for your information.
It absolutely should be, how could anyone have possibly accepted the terms and conditions of a Fishbowl account?!
This manager’s got an address.
Every corporation is destined to turn into some kind of deadbeat dad. They show up 8 years later because you find out they’ve been using your social security number to buy crypto.
Really the only outcome when, in both cases, all they care about is money.