Glassdoor is tying real names to anonymous profiles without consent

Want to protect your anonymity? Don't use Glassdoor.

The site, which has been popular for years because it gives people an anonymous way to talk a whole bunch of mess about their employers, has allegedly been attaching users' real names to their anonymous profiles, per Ars Technica. This is evidently due to Glassdoor's acquisition of the networking app Fishbowl. If you have a Glassdoor account, that means you also now have a Fishbowl account, and the latter requires a real name while the former does not.

It should be noted that this information is not presented publicly on a user's Glassdoor profile, but is instead stored in the back-end. By default, employers shouldn't be able to find that information. Crucially, this all happened without Glassdoor users' consent.

This is obviously tricky and uncomfortable for a number of reasons. Glassdoor is a valuable resource for honest criticism of bad workplace practices at companies, big and small. If a software update introduced an unforeseen glitch, or bad-faith actors committed a data breach, real names could surface and become tied to specific users in some way.

Maybe find somewhere else to talk about your old jobs.

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