Skeletons in Your Tubes

A lot of people have "skeletons in their closet." Sometimes they have a nasty way of being discovered or just falling out accidentally. This isn't all that uncommon, particularly with elected officials to whom such skeletons can be very damaging. It's not usually thought of as something "average" people have to worry about - in terms of a personal liability.

To an even greater degree, people don't usually think of the details of their personal life as liabilities. Who cares if I like hiking on the weekends and always go to such-and-such a bar on Thursdays with the same group of people? Who cares if I used to own a motorcycle and have a strange tattoo on my lower back that no one has ever seen?

Contrary to that perception, such pieces of information - harmless in themselves (there's nothing intrinsically wrong with any of the examples I mentioned above) - can be quite damaging to someone, particularly someone looking for someone applying for a new job.

According to this article, 23% of people admit to using Google to do a little checking on someone before they have a meeting. All of a sudden, your website, your blog posts, other people's blog posts about you, etc. can be a massive liability.

There are some interesting anecdotes in the article if you can spare the 3 minutes to read it.