Glassdoor No Longer Anonymous
cellio (via Hacker News, Reddit):
Glassdoor now requires your real name and will add it to older accounts without your consent if they learn it, and your only option is to delete your account. They do not care that this puts people at risk with their employers. They do not care that this seems to run counter to their own data-privacy policies.
[…]
After I responded to that support email last week, I found that they had updated my profile to add my real name and location, the name pulled from the email From line I didn’t think to cloak because who does that? I never gave consent for that change, and said so explicitly when I objected. (In what follows, I was so fixated on my name that I didn’t immediately notice my city was there too. I don’t know how long it’s been there.)
Glassdoor’s spokesperson told Ars that Glassdoor does not comment on specific user accounts, only sharing a statement that does not seem to apply to Monica’s situation.
[…]
EFF’s Mackey told Ars that there may be other risks to Glassdoor users. Employers could leverage real names or information used on Fishbowl to “potentially narrow and/or identify” Glassdoor reviewers. And the Fishbowl and Glassdoor data being combined means that information linking accounts could be subject to legal requests, such as an employer subpoena or a law enforcement request for data.
[…]
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.”
I was forced to add at least one job history, write one job review, and enter my salary history for at least one job BEFORE they would let me delete my review and account.
Update (2024-04-12): Lawrence Abrams:
Restaurant reservation platform OpenTable says that all reviews on the platform will no longer be fully anonymous starting May 22nd and will now show members’ profile pictures and first names.
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> I was forced to add at least one job history, write one job review, and enter my salary history…
It seems to be possible to bypass this by visiting the user settings page directly at . (I got through the modal prompt by using my browser's developer tools to remove it and its overlay from the DOM, at which point the settings link was accessible.)
In my previous comment, the URL got stripped out: https://www.glassdoor.com/member/profile/settings.htm
This is outrageous. As it was Glassdoor had many very-hard-to-believe 5 star reviews by dubious companies. Now, people will be blacklisted from their industries by over eager HR drones. Then HR software will use it to automatically blacklist them. And that's assuming people don't lie as to who they are when registering.