<p>I’m talking about for private profiles. For example my Facebook, twitter, and Instagram are all set on private. </p>
<p>For Facebook you can see some posts and my profile pictures. Even with full view I have nothing to hide (I don’t post anything I wouldn’t want my family seeing lol) and I follow a lot of professional fb pages and career-related pages. And for things like twitter and Instagram, it’s completely private as well (again, nothing I wouldn’t like my family seeing I just don’t like strangers lurking lol). </p>
<p>With that said, I’m just <em>genuinely</em> curious on how social media background checks work when profiles are private and their search becomes so limited?</p>
<p>I’ve also been getting some odd friend requests from people with seemingly fake profiles and was wondering if this was a thing employers do to look deeper into the profile?</p>
<p>This has been happening more to me lately. In some cases I’m not sure if they meant another person by my same name, or if it’s just fake. A lot come from the country of my name’s ethnicity, but it’s one where you would expect a lot of fake profiles to come from. </p>
<p>To address the actual question, I don’t know what they do, but I highly doubt that they’re going through huge efforts to dig up every little thing about you. If stuff about you is hard to come by, they probably just give up. </p>
<p>If you have everything set to private, and you don’t post things you wouldn’t want your grandma to see you are probably safe. Where some kids get into trouble is they think that just using a different name is going to protect them. Instead of real first name, real last name they might use first and middle or some completely made up name. But then, those same people keep their email address or phone number in their profile. Recruiters have told me that they always google search by name, email address and phone. </p>
<p>D was put in charge of unearthing the “dirt” on a potential new hire. After that, she said on her blog that she wanted to wipe out every single thing she posted on the web, including her blog :)</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt - a person with decent search skills can do wonders with the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, and Bing). It is truly amazing what pops up in some of these searches. Eons ago the NSA published a de-classified document on how to use Google to filter search results to get down to the information that was not obvious from regular searches… I quickly downloaded a copy. ;)</p>
<p>This is honestly one of my biggest fears having such a common name. I’m not even the only person with my name in my Master’s program! If anyone googles me, they’re likely to find someone that could very well be me but isn’t me. (My email and phone # aren’t associated with my account.) </p>
<p>I don’t really have anything on my FB that would be an issue, but still. </p>
<p>My husband’s name is also very common - not as bad as “John Smith,” but not far from it. A guy by the same name came to look at our first house when we were selling it “by owner.” We all laughed and agreed it would be a horrible idea for him to buy the house.</p>
<p>We do a general search - our state has a judiciary website that is free and open to the public so first we get to see every court case a potential new hire was ever involved in. Just last week that eliminated a few candidates who had recent possession charges, bad check writing and petty theft. Three different people mind you. Then we look at social media and just glance at pictures if it isn’t open. When you get hundreds of resumes, we wait until we’re down to a handful to search. Plus, I live in a pretty small area - it’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon here. I’m not looking to be a private detective and know everything about someone’s personal life - just enough to know if they live chaotic lives.</p>
<p>I don’t have a Facebook account. Haven’t felt the need. I think it might have been a good idea to not have one. I still don’t understand the privacy settings that are available, or exactly how things that one person puts “out there” wind up showing themselves to other people who really aren’t directly known by the person. Maybe I’m missing something. </p>
<p>Partly I haven’t done Facebook because I want to control whom I interact with. I think it would be awkward to get a friends request from someone that I don’t care to be in contact with. </p>
<p>I agree that googling can dig up interesting information about people, if it exists. You can find newspaper references, sometimes lawsuits, and a variety of other things. Wedding announcements and obituaries often have quite a bit of information in them relating to other people in the family. You do have to be cautious about conclusions because so many people have the same name, even somewhat uncommon ones. </p>
<p>If you have a common name, people will figure out how to narrow the search down to get the relevant results. What is more scary is when a person has a very uncommon name, has zero online presence other than publications and patents (not me), and then someone else pops up with the exact same name and a horrid, open to all FB page that now comes at the top of all searches! Yikes. I know a couple of folks like that. </p>