Apparently, another blogger got fired for things he wrote on his blog. He didn't care much about it though, since he found a better job already. But still.
What surprised me more is that there actually seems to be a word for getting fired for what you write on your blog: you get dooced.
I'm pretty sure nobody of my colleagues knows the way to my blog. I check who has been in here daily (Yes, I know you were here, so you might as well leave a comment!), and as soon as a Spanish IP address shows up in the statistics, I double check the way he or she got here.
Not that I have written anything they can't read. But as long as Bloggers keep getting dooced, I think it's normal to get a little paranoid.
They once found my former blog though. But as it was written in Dutch, they couldn't understand a single word. Before I knew it, the little buggers were using Babelfish to find out what I had written. Luckily, Dutch is such a horrible language that even Babelfish couldn't produce understandable sentences for them. That'll teach them invading my privacy.
9 comments:
That's quite insane, who are these people doing the firing? How are you able to track people? lol well I was going to leave a comment before I read that you already knew I was hear anyway :P now I'm paranoid lol!
You can see I've been here? o_O
Hmm... maybe I should be careful when I write things about my teachers too then. :-|
Hey, I once let babelfish translate "godverdomme" and it said "god far stupid", hehe. ^_^
That dooce lady lives in Salt Lake, where I live and work! I can't belive how famous she is. Bloggers talk about her everywhere. When will they talk of me? I guess I better spruce my blog up a bit.
Anyway, I think Dutch is a beautiful language (I'm 1/4 Dutch). I can't speak it, but that doesn't mean I don't think it sounds great when someone else speaks it. I'd love to learn it, myself. I have a large list of languages I need to learn: German, Chinese, Spanish and Dutch.
And when you say Lehi, do you mean Lehi, Utah?
Well, I'm new to your blog, but I'll probably come back soon. In the meantime, stop by mine.
Ciao!
p.s. frankspoodle.blogspot.com is a great blog about working for an ornery old guy.
dainty fairy, the people doing the firing are called employers. You'll get to know them when you grow older. ;-p
I check on my visitors using extreme tracking.
Lien, I see everything.
And if babelfish translates like that, no wonder my colleagues couldn't understand what I was writing.
Aries, welcome. So how did you find me? You ask about Lehi because it says 'Hello to the people visiting from Lehi' on my blog? That's just a little script that looks where you, the visitor, are sitting behind your computer, and it displays a different city and state for every visitor, depending on where you are.
Christophe,
I like to read Dainty Fairy's blog and saw your comment, that's how i found you. I figured out that you tracked people through that French site (I speak French. Or read it. Whatever).
Incidentally, I swear the dooce girl (Heather) was sitting at a table behind mine at the Rio Grande restaurant during lunch. I swear, she even had baby that looked like Leta.
It's OK to stand up for what you write - and maybe take a slug now and again. It gives you a bit of encouragement, as well as responsibility. Let it come - if 'they' don't like what they hear, then it was time to move anyway.
I guess that is one reason why we live in other countries - it's good to be different.
Hold on - I'm meant to choose an identity here
- Lenox
www.theentertaineronline.com
Lenox,
I don't think a blog is worth losing your job over. But I also think they shouldn't judge you for what you write on your blog. Not if you don't start mentioning classified information, that is.
chris,
be afraid be very very afraid...remember the canteen...the that thing you said about uh...and the ah... :p
didn't i warn you? ha ha ha
Boy! I hate to say it, but a person would have to be really careless or lacking in common sense to get dooced. There's just a few simple guidelines to follow if you want to (more or less) dooce-proof your blog:
1. Don't publish any confidential company information. You have this obligation to your employer. If you break it, you deserve to be fired. In some cases, you can even find yourself in a heap of trouble with market regulators. [BTW, can you guess which department I work for? ;-)]
2. Don't divulge the name of your employer. It's like drawing a roadmap from your blog to the H/R office.
3. Don't publish insulting or personal details about your co-workers or...God forbid...your damn boss.
Really...this stuff should be obvious. And even if you follow these three rules, there's plenty of good blog-meat leftover.
But for those who ignore these guidelines and find themselves dooced...perhaps it's not such a bad thing. Think of it as capitalism's version of Darwinism.
Really...would you want one of these people working for you?
Sal
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