Customers say Glassdoor added actual names to person profiles with out their consent

Customers of the well-liked web site Glassdoor, which lets anybody anonymously signal as much as assessment firms they’ve labored for, say Glassdoor collected and added their names to their person profiles with out their consent.

One person, who goes by Monica, wrote in a publish on her private weblog that Glassdoor added her title and the town the place she lives to her Glassdoor profile following an e mail trade with Glassdoor buyer help, regardless of having by no means supplied her title through the sign-up course of some years earlier. Monica, whose final title we’re not publishing to guard her privateness, accused Glassdoor of getting her full title from the e-mail she despatched to buyer help, which she says they added to her Glassdoor profile.

“My email ‘from’ line contains my full name — never thought that would be a problem!” Monica advised TechCrunch in an e mail. “They then added my name to my Glassdoor profile.”

Monica repeatedly protested Glassdoor, telling buyer help that the corporate didn’t have her consent or permission to do that. However Glassdoor mentioned Monica was “required” to have her title added to her profile, including that this could not compromise her anonymity of previous critiques she gave. Monica mentioned that her anonymity may not final if Glassdoor was to expertise a hack or a knowledge breach and compromise customers’ information. It additionally means this info might be obtained by authorized course of, equivalent to a lawsuit or police demanding entry to Glassdoor person information.

As Monica defined, Glassdoor will add a person’s actual title (and probably different info) to the person’s account with out their permission if Glassdoor learns it.

And the one different choice is to delete your account, Monica mentioned.

Glassdoor customers expressed alarm at Monica’s story, which has been extensively shared on social media and news-sharing websites, for worry that their anonymity might be compromised by having information collected about them and added to their profiles, as effectively.

Glassdoor has lengthy allowed customers to enroll anonymously. In 2021, Glassdoor bought Fishbowl, a semi-anonymous skilled social community web site that permits customers to “ask questions without disclosing your name.” Ars Technica, which first reported Monica’s story, defined that Fishbowl requires customers to confirm their identities earlier than utilizing the positioning. As a part of the acquisition deal, Glassdoor signed each person up for a Fishbowl account, which means Glassdoor must change its phrases of service so that each Glassdoor person may be verified.

Aaron Mackey, an legal professional with the digital rights group Digital Frontier Basis, advised TechCrunch that Glassdoor has been an “industry leader” in defending its customers’ anonymity. Mackey beforehand defended an nameless Glassdoor person in court docket whose employer tried to unmask and identify their identity.

“We hope that Glassdoor will continue to defend its users’ anonymity in court,” mentioned Mackey. “But the latest news regarding Glassdoor’s policies raises concerns about whether users may be identified even if their information is never sought by an employer or law enforcement. Those policies also appear to conflict with, or at least be in tension with, Glassdoor’s goal of encouraging employees to candidly review their employers.”

In some circumstances, the information added to the person’s profile didn’t fully line up.

Josh Simmons mentioned Glassdoor added details about him to his profile with out his consent, describing it as a “breach of trust.” Simmons advised TechCrunch that he didn’t understand how Glassdoor obtained his private information.

“It’s not clear to me how they got this information,” Simmons advised TechCrunch. “I didn’t have any social accounts connected to Glassdoor, and I hadn’t used the service in several years,” suggesting that the information could have been scraped or come from a knowledge dealer.

Simmons mentioned his supplemented Glassdoor profile had an “incoherent mix of details, but each detail was correct in isolation,” describing how Glassdoor obtained the title of his consultancy appropriate however jumbled his location in California together with his foremost shopper based mostly in London.

“Taken together, it signaled to me that it was the result of an automated process,” Simmons mentioned.

By Glassdoor’s personal admission, the corporate says on its website that it’s “unable to fully confirm our users’ identities, the truthfulness of their contributions, or their employment status.” It’s not clear what the purpose of Glassdoor’s information assortment is that if the data will not be correct.

When reached for remark, Glassdoor spokesperson Amanda Livingood wouldn’t reply TechCrunch’s particular questions, together with how — if in any respect — Glassdoor verifies the accuracy of the data it receives, or how it may be used or obtained. Glassdoor doesn’t publish a transparency report detailing the variety of requests for person information it receives from regulation enforcement.

As a substitute, the corporate supplied a boilerplate assertion:

Glassdoor is dedicated to offering a platform for individuals to share their opinions and experiences about their jobs and corporations, anonymously – with out worry of intimidation or retaliation. Person critiques on Glassdoor have all the time and can all the time be nameless. Within the Glassdoor group, customers all the time have the selection to publish with their title or publish anonymously with their firm title or job title. Glassdoor has by no means and can by no means reveal a person’s title alongside their content material, until that’s what the person chooses.

Mackey mentioned that the chance of information breaches or authorized calls for are magnified as a result of Glassdoor is now gathering extra details about customers that would establish them. “But because Glassdoor now collects that information, including from email addresses and headers, Glassdoor now has data that directly identifies their users,” Mackey mentioned.

That leaves customers like Monica with no selection however to delete their account if they aren’t prepared to have their title on their profile. And so Monica did.

Based on Monica, closing your account simply deactivates it. If you wish to absolutely delete your Glassdoor account, you may head over to this specific Glassdoor privacy request page and fill out the information request type with the suitable choice, equivalent to “Delete my personal data.”

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