Cyber Identity

Well, it's been a long time since I last blogged. It's not that I haven't had time, well, I have time, just not for blogging. Let's try to summarize what took place since the last time I posted an entry.

I've re-pledged to the same fraternity that I quit in my first semester at Georgia Tech. It doesn't happen often, most people end up joining a different fraternity. But I had a great time at this one, I quit because of commitment issues, not because I didn't like it there. Now that I've decided my major, got my work issues settled and more adjusted to Georgia Tech, I am now more or less settled down, which is the reason why I decided to go back. At one moment though, I felt like I wasn't going to. It seems that the bitter taste is still lingering around since the last time I was there, but hopefully, I'll be able to make amends this time round.

Notice some changes in this blog? Yes, some of the profiles are gone. It's recently come to my attention that companies are starting to go online to seek extra information to screen potential new employees to companies. Social network sites like Friendster, Facebook and Xanga seems to benefit by getting paid, or in some cases, are free to , getting them access to view the profiles of potential applicants. It's pretty insane, I know. So what happens is, some dumbass people will have stuff like a picture of them piss-drunk, doing drugs or even information about their political or religious allegience and assume that the person going through your resume or application does not approve of your actions, your application is in serious jeopardy of being discarded. Though I do none of those mentioned above, maybe except for the political part, I still do not want to risk having to go through such a thing. The last few days, I've been going through different websites to erase my profiles or information completely. Though search engines like Google and Yahoo! still generates links that point to my blog or other places, these results should be buried pretty deep in the world of internet due to inactivity by the time I seek full time employment, which may be in about 2 years or so.

So you've noticed my blogger profile is gone, soon, I'll have to change my URL just to avoid the hits, I'll let you know about it sooner or later. Maybe I might just keep it. Don't worry, I won't delete this blog for now, I've got too much stuff here for me to delete. Or maybe I'll export it to be hosted through my university domain, I'm not sure for now.

I mean, I've already had an incident of being cyber-approached - like, I mean a serious one - recently. That's evident enough that you leave trails everywhere in the internet that can be tracked back. It's kind of scary, especially when you think about not knowing who it may be that's looking up your information. Admit it, we all do it time to time, minor or major. Some people do it out of curiosity, some out of desperation, some may be a serious addict. By putting up obvious and very public (I don't care what you say, your blog is public if you don't have password protection) information up, it's really easy to track things. So the only way you can erase is by erasing what you have about yourself. People putting up pictures of them smoking weed or joining 'I-hate-my-work' clubs (Don't misunderstand - I love my job) is just plain stupid, and it's inviting trouble to yourself. And when it hits you, you'll be blaming the company for being nosey, but in reality, there is no one but to blame yourself.

So I'm taking actions for preventive measure. I'm being a little paranoid, but it's gonna help, even if it means just a little.