Work/Blog Precautionary Measures

November 21, 2006 1:37 PM

The cat's out of the bag: I told an (non-supervisor) acquaintance at work about my (before now) secret blog. What do I need to do to not get fired?

It's actually not as bad as it sounds: my workplace is very very liberal in a very liberal town, and I don't have use any identifying person or place names anywhere, nor do I feature compromising photos of myself or others. I do happen to employ the word "fuck" and it's derivatives a lot, and exhibit somewhat un-p.c. humor. Basically, there's no way you could prove the blog is mine, even if someone did take offense to something I had written. But I am paranoid, and so I ask: if this were you, would you feel it necessary to edit certain things out, and if so what?

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (19 comments total)

Do you talk about work? If you do, lock up/delete any entries where you are critical of your company, your co-workers, and ESPECIALLY your boss.

And maybe you could ask your friend to keep the blog thing under his/her hat?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:46 PM on November 21, 2006 [2 favorites]

Also, some blog platforms will allow you to block certain IPs. You could block your whole office.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:49 PM on November 21, 2006 [2 favorites]

Move to a blog system where you can set entries to be private/friends only. Anytime you mention anything that has to do with work or anything else you even remotely suspect might make your co-workers feel uncomfortable about you, set it to be non-public.

Even if there is no way to "prove" it was yours, you have now linked it to yourself via telling your co-worker. Cover your tracks and hope no one delves into the Google cache.
posted by mikepop at 1:50 PM on November 21, 2006

Speaking of cache, there are tags you can add to your site so search engines will index it, but not cache it (so if you do have to delete an entry at the last minute, there won't still be evidence of it later). I forget exactly how- hopefully someone will know how.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:55 PM on November 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

If you have time stamps on your posts, make sure they don't fall within working hours as that could be used against you. In general, don't blog at work and don't blog about work.
posted by Ljubljana at 2:00 PM on November 21, 2006

My personal feeling is that one never puts anything in writing which one is unwilling to share face to face with anyone( including anonymous postings)except information that is subject to ethical or legal constraints of confidentiality. I realize this may not be a popular position but one I have found useful for myself. In your particular case, I would edit as appropriate, particularly the " un pc humor" unless you are willing to go public and accept the responsibility for it. While only tangentially related there was recently an article about how blogs and other questionable postings --beer bashes, (partial) nudity, inflammatory posts, etc) are back firing as employers become more and more accustomed to using web searches as part of routine HR screenings or just simple curiosity. Good Luck
posted by rmhsinc at 2:17 PM on November 21, 2006

It's a bit hard to give good advice without knowing all of the specifics, but I would say as a general matter, most employers are fairly tolerant and respectful of what their employees do on their own time. In other words, assuming you're not the "public face" of the company, using blue language, or discussing your personal life, probably won't get you in trouble (again, this is not universal -- there are no doubt employers who would take action for a purely personal out-of-work statement or incident).

But the minute you bring up work, and make even the slightest mention that could be construed as embarassing to the company or offensive to a co-worker, you can start boxing up your desk.
posted by pardonyou? at 2:17 PM on November 21, 2006

Are you an at-will employee? If so, it doesn't matter whether or not they can prove the blog is yours.

At a minimum, I would immediately protect all of my entries so that only my selected friends (with accounts) could see them. If my entries were on a service without this feature, I would move them to one with it.

I would also contact Google and get them to kill their cached copy as soon as possible. The last thing I would do is pray that nobody at the office has heard of the Wayback Machine.

This isn't because of the profanity -- rather, it's because what you think is "somewhat un-PC humor" may sound like bigoted raving to someone who can't hear you say it or just isn't getting the joke. Also, if you ever mention your workplace, coworkers, job, anything, I would kill that first of all.
posted by booksandlibretti at 2:30 PM on November 21, 2006

I would also contact Google and get them to kill their cached copy as soon as possible.

I don't know that you have to contact them. When I put the no cache tags on my site, the cache was killed automatically once it picked up the tags.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:35 PM on November 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

Er, surely just don't talk about work? You can't be fired for tasteless humour, especially on your own time. Oh, and don't blog at work. Sorted.

But, you're probably in America where they have those weird 'at will' employment laws. So, I guess you could be fired.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:37 PM on November 21, 2006

You're right -- if you just put up the tags, the cache will be killed as soon as Google checks and sees the tags. I meant that the asker probably wants to contact Google to ask them to do it as soon as possible, rather than just waiting for it to be his site's turn again.
posted by booksandlibretti at 2:43 PM on November 21, 2006

Don't blog about work, at all. Don't display time stamps on your entries. Fix these two items retroactively.

Note to anyone reading this, if you use Windows Live Messenger at work, and you also use the Windows Live Spaces thing, cow-orkers will see a little star next to your name when you update your Live Spaces site and will be provided with a link to it.
posted by krisjohn at 2:44 PM on November 21, 2006

Happy Dave's first paragraph is totally wrong. His second paragraph is totally right. You can be fired for your blog. Many people have been, in fact. Take down anything that you think will offend your boss, whether it's about him/her or not. If my job was important to me, that's what I'd do.
posted by crapples at 2:59 PM on November 21, 2006

Woo. Here's a question I can really relate to (that's me in paragraph 5).

The short answer: blog (or post on metafilter) with the clear knowledge that anything you do say can be used against you, whether they should or not. That should always temper your statements.

Now, I'm a bit of a hothead, but I didn't post anything that really should have got me fired, IMO. But it did, albeit with a reason from the employer akin to "we don't have a good reason, but it's best for everyone, so here's 6 weeks severance". You may be in the same boat...but you have to decide whether it's worth it for you...express the opinion and maybe get fired for it, or withhold it...keep your job...and find a different outlet for your feelings.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:03 PM on November 21, 2006

Kill the blog. Or edit it heavily, getting rid of anything offensive, removing all timestamps, insert the requisite nocache instructions into robots.txt. Then stop updating it. Any coworkers will probably get bored of checking for updates quickly, and will then forget about it.

At the same time, you could start a new blog, being more careful to keep this one anonymous, if you enjoyed working on the old one.

But if you're going to say things that you don't want every single person who knows you reading, including those who have the power to fire you, do a better job not telling them about it. You can't have it both ways. Either it's anonymous and a closely guarded secret, or it's public and you need to maintain it just like any other part of your public-facing identity.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:41 PM on November 21, 2006

I am paranoid...

Maybe. Without seeing your blog, it's impossible to say. Based on what you've said about your company and what you've said about your blog, I would guess that you're in the clear — except for that you're obviously worried, which might indicate that you've omitted something from this AskMe. Just because you haven't identified a reason to worry (aside from "un-p.c. humor," which is too vague to be useful) doesn't mean that such a reason doesn't exist.

In your shoes, I would probably kill the blog. I'd replace every entry with lorem ipsum and add no-cache tags. (I'm not tech savvy, and you should take someone else's advice on the best way to accomplish this.) The bottom line is, it's only a blog and if deleting it can ease your concern — regardless of whether that concern is justified — then it's probably worth doing.

But again, I haven't seen your blog. Judge for yourself: How important is it to you? Are you writing about important issues to thousands of daily readers, or are you just fucking around with a keyboard? Weigh risk versus reward: Maybe the risk of being fired is minimal, but is your blog worth that risk?
posted by cribcage at 4:16 PM on November 21, 2006

Basically, there's no way you could prove the blog is mine, even if someone did take offense to something I had written.

I don't believe you. It's amazing how smart Google and humans can be when it comes to figuring out who wrote something.

Do you ever mention the town you live in? Your workplace? Any friend or coworker by name? Do any online friends ever link to you using your real name? Do you respond to email from blog readers using your real name? Do you have any sites under your real name (an online resume, Yahoo profile, etc.)? Do they link to your blog?

Also, if you've ever worked on your blog at work, evidence could be in a log file somewhere.

Anyway, unless you live outside the US and have some kind of law to protect you, they don't have to "prove the blog is yours," they just have to believe it is. In that respect, your cow-orker's word would be good enough. The concept of proof doesn't really come up unless you sue them.

I doubt you've written anything that can be legally used to fire you, but making an employer mad at you can start them looking for other reasons to fire you, or to lay you off. You don't want that.

My impression is that you're concerned. If your blog strictly contained something specific like movie reviews, profanity or not, I wouldn't worry, but if you're writing about work and life, your concern is well founded.

I'm even more paranoid than you, but my rules are:

1. Don't blog at work.
2. Don't blog about work.
3. If anyone at work has any way of connecting the blog to you, don't blog about anything even remotely personal. Or political. Or religious. Or offensive. Or obscene.

Of course, I'm self-employed, and this is one of the reasons why, so feel free to ignore my advice.
posted by mmoncur at 9:34 PM on November 21, 2006

Get rid of it completely. Now. The above reasons are all good ones. Start a new one if you like, and keep it under wraps.

I see it this way -- there's almost no way you will regret taking the precaution. There are a lot of ways you could end up regretting *not* taking the precaution.
posted by KAS at 8:20 AM on November 22, 2006

I don't believe you. It's amazing how smart Google and humans can be when it comes to figuring out who wrote something.

Agreed! My blog shows up in searches for my real name, even though I don't have my real name anywhere on the site. Can't figure out how that happened, but there it is.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:38 PM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]