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Employer Review Site Glassdoor Deanonymized Users Without Consent

March 21, 2024 By Heinrich Long -- Leave a Comment
Employer Review Site Glassdoor Deanonymized Users Without Consent
Employer Review Site Glassdoor Deanonymized Users Without Consent

Glassdoor users have been reporting lately that the platform has
introduced changes in its privacy policy, which include publishing
people's real names and locations on their profiles without securing
consent.

Glassdoor is a website where current and former employees can
anonymously submit reviews about their experiences working for a
company, including details such as their employer's culture,
management practices, salaries, work-life balance, and more. Job
seekers can read those reviews to help them make job-related
decisions, and employees can use anonymous feedback to improve on key
areas.

While Glassdoor is built on the principle of transparency, it
wouldn't work without securing anonymity for reviewers, as exposing
internal practices could put reviewers in legal trouble,
blacklisting, firing, and other forms of retaliation. Yet, this is
precisely what is happening to the platform right now, according to
some user reports.

A Glassdoor account holder named 'Monica' posted about her recent
experience explaining that she created an account about ten years ago
when the platform only required an email address. She specifically
chose not to link her Glassdoor account with Facebook or Google.

After responding to a support email from Glassdoor, Monica noticed
that her profile had been updated to include her real name and
location without the platform asking for her consent.

This discovery led to a series of email exchanges with Glassdoor's
support team, during which the author was informed of a new policy
requiring all users to verify their identity for full platform
access. The support agents explain that this was happening in the
context of a transition to a "verified network," including the
introduction of 'Fishbowl' accounts linked to Glassdoor profiles.

Fishbowl is a semi-anonymous social networking platform designed for
professionals to connect, share insights, and engage in discussions.
The platform was bought by Glassdoor in 2021, and its engineers are
working on introducing some level of integration that would offer
users a combination of Glassdoor's insights and Fishbowl's networking
opportunities.

Monica strongly objected to the whole idea, citing privacy concerns
and the potential risks of such information being exposed, especially
in relation to their employment and the security of their data
online. Glassdoor's support agents didn't yield and insisted that
real names cannot be removed, so the only option for Monica would be
to delete the account entirely.

Monica concludes by advising all Glassdoor users to delete their
accounts. According to the platform's privacy policy, deletion merely
deactivates the account, and to completely erase personal data, one
must specifically request the deletion of their personal data through
a form provided at the bottom of Glassdoor's data policy page.

A report that appeared in TechCrunch yesterday attempts to fill in
some of the gaps left in Monica's blog post, such as how exactly
Glassdoor got to know the user's name without them giving it. Another
Glassdoor user, Josh Simmons, who also got his name exposed on his
public profile without previously sharing it with the platform,
speculates that the info was either scraped or acquired from a data
broker, both very shady scenarios.

To delete your digital footprint and remove your info from data
broker websites, you can use a data removal service, such as Incogni.

Aaron Mackey from the Electronic Frontier Foundation highlighted
Glassdoor's previous unwavering stance in protecting its users'
anonymity in courts and called the recent developments highly
concerning.

RestorePrivacy has contacted Glassdoor for a comment on the
allegations and clarifications on its policies on user anonymity, and
we will update this post as soon as we hear back.

In the meantime, if you have a Glassdoor account and have posted
anything in the past, make sure to log in and check the information
included on your public profile to avoid damaging exposure.

Further reading:

  * Qualcomm Denies Unlawful User Location Data Collection on Phones
  * 23andMe Accounts Hijacked and Data Put Up for Sale on Hacker
    Forum
  * How to Delete Yourself from the Internet (Easy Steps)
  * AT&T Investigating Potential Breach Following Leak of 73.4
    Million Records

[svg][RP-Heinric]

About Heinrich Long

Heinrich is an associate editor for RestorePrivacy and veteran expert
in the digital privacy field. He was born in a small town in the
Midwest (USA) before setting sail for offshore destinations. Although
he long chafed at the global loss of online privacy, after Edward
Snowden's revelations in 2013, Heinrich realized it was time to join
the good fight for digital privacy rights. Heinrich enjoys traveling
the world, while also keeping his location and digital tracks
covered.

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