Watch out for digital dirt

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, was interviewed Saturday evening on the NBC Nightly News. The story was about how employers are increasingly using sites such as Facebook for background checking of potential employees. NBC Nightly News reports that "Facebook was meant as a place to share personal information but now it could affect students' future." Rothberg's advice, along with a link back to his blog, can be found at the CCF site under the article "Dangers of Posting Private Info to Facebook."

It's a sobering fact to realize that once posted your words do not really go away. There's always the WayBack Machine and other internet archives to resurrect what we thought was dead and bring it back. I like Rothberg's analogy, "Posting information on-line is like getting a tattoo. There's nothing inherently wrong with posting information on-line or getting a tattoo, but in both cases you need to be prepared for it to be out there forever and for people to see it whom you may not want to see it."

How does knowing that your words can come back to bite you affect what you post to listserves, blogs, emails or other digital media?