Its users popular website Glassdoor, which allows anyone to sign up anonymously to review companies they’ve worked for, say Glassdoor collected and added their names to their user profiles without their consent.
One user, named Monica, wrote in a post on her personal blog that Glassdoor added her name and city of residence to her Glassdoor profile after an email exchange with Glassdoor customer support, even though she had never provided the her name during the sign- process a few years earlier. Monica, whose last name we are not publishing to protect her privacy, accused Glassdoor of taking her full name from an email she sent to customer support, 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 told TechCrunch in an email. “They then added my name to my Glassdoor profile.”
Monica complained repeatedly to Glassdoor, telling customer support that the company did not have her consent or permission to do this. However, Glassdoor said Monica was “required” to have her name added to her profile, adding that this would not compromise her anonymity in previous reviews she had given. Monica said her anonymity might not last if Glassdoor were to experience a hack or data breach and compromise user data. It also means that this information can be obtained through legal process, such as a lawsuit or the police demanding access to Glassdoor user data.
As Monica explained, Glassdoor will add a user’s real name (and potentially other information) to the user’s account without their permission if Glassdoor learns.
And the only other option is to delete your account, Monica said.
Glassdoor users expressed concern about Monica’s story, which has been widely shared on social media and news-sharing sites, fearing that their anonymity could be compromised by data being collected about them and added to their profiles. .
“It’s not clear to me how they got that information.” Josh Simmons, Glassdoor user
Glassdoor has long allowed users to register anonymously. In 2021, Glassdoor purchased Fishbowl, a semi-anonymous professional social networking site that allows users to “ask questions anonymously.” Ars Technica, which reported for the first time Monica’s story, explained that Fishbowl requires users to verify their identity before using the site. As part of the acquisition agreement, Glassdoor signed up every user for a Fishbowl account, meaning Glassdoor would have to change its terms of service so that every Glassdoor user could also be verified.
Aaron Mackey, an attorney at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, told TechCrunch that Glassdoor has been an “industry leader” in defending the anonymity of its users. Mackey previously defended an anonymous Glassdoor user in court whose employer tried to reveal and identify them.
“We hope Glassdoor will continue to defend its users’ anonymity in court,” said Mackey. “But the latest news about Glassdoor’s policies raises concerns about whether users may be identified even if their information is never sought by an employer or law enforcement. These policies also appear to conflict, or at least be in tension, with Glassdoor’s goal of encouraging employees to honestly review their employers.”
In some cases, the data added to the user’s profile was not fully aligned.
Josh Simmons said Glassdoor added information about him to his profile without his consent, describing it as a “breach of trust.” Simmons told TechCrunch that he didn’t know how Glassdoor got his personal data.
“It’s not clear to me how they got that information,” Simmons told TechCrunch. “I had no social media accounts connected to Glassdoor and hadn’t used the service in many years,” suggesting the data may have decayed or come from a data broker.
Simmons said the completed Glassdoor profile had a “disjointed mix of details, but every detail was correct individually,” describing how Glassdoor got his consulting firm’s name right but mixed up his California location with his main client with based in London.
“Together, it showed me that it was the result of an automated process,” Simmons said.
By Glassdoor’s own admission, the company states on its website that it “is unable to fully confirm the identity of our users, the veracity of their contributions, or their employment status.” It is not clear what the purpose of Glassdoor’s data collection is if the information is not accurate.
When reached for comment, Glassdoor spokeswoman Amanda Livingood did not respond to TechCrunch’s specific questions, including how — if at all — Glassdoor verifies the accuracy of the information it receives or how it can be used or acquired. Glassdoor does not publish a transparency report detailing the number of requests for user data it receives from law enforcement.
Instead, the company provided a boilerplate statement:
Glassdoor is committed to providing a platform for people to share their opinions and experiences about their jobs and companies, anonymously – without fear of intimidation or retaliation. User reviews on Glassdoor have always been and always will be anonymous. In the Glassdoor community, users always have the option to post with their name or post anonymously with their company name or job title. Glassdoor has never and will never reveal a user’s name along with their content unless the user chooses to do so.
Mackey said the risk of a data breach or legal claim is magnified because Glassdoor now collects more information about users that could identify them. “But because Glassdoor now collects this information, including email addresses and headers, Glassdoor now has data that directly identifies its users,” Mackey said.
This leaves users like Monica no choice but to delete their account if they are not willing to have their name on their profile. And so Monica did.
According to Monica, closing your account simply deactivates it. If you want to completely delete your Glassdoor account, you can go to this particular Glassdoor privacy request page and complete the data request form with the appropriate option such as “Delete my personal data”.
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