Hacking MySpace

It’s no secret that employers are now screening job candidates by googling them. Which means you might not get a job if you’ve posted something compromising about yourself on MySpace (or anywhere else), and forgotten about it, or if someone else has posted something unpleasant about you.

Often the problem is that if someone else has posted something unpleasant about you it’s difficult to get them to remove the content. Reputationdefender offers a subscription service that allows you to track your various lives across different social networking sites and blogs. It also offers a services that takes care of the messy bit of getting compromising content removed.

The company monitors most of the popular social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, LiveJournal, as well as sites such as Flickr, Photobucket and YouTube.

Reputationdefender costs $9.95 per month if you pay two years in advance ($238.80), or $12.95 per month for one year ($155.40), or $15.95 per month. You’ll also have to pay an additional $29.95 for every item you want deleted.

I think this is a great idea. But it’s also worth mentioning again that you should be very careful about what you post online, especially if you’re posting provocative or suggestive photos, or photos of a drunken party, for example. 

Even if you can remove the content, don’t forget that others can copy that content and publish it elsewhere - without you knowing.

Conversely, if you do post provocative material, perhaps you will get that job, but for the wrong reasons, and you may find that your new boss has another agenda.

I think a good rule to follow is never to post something that you wouldn’t want your mother or father seeing (whatever your age), or that you wouldn’t want your teacher/employer/creepy neighbor seeing.

Thanks to Mashable for the heads up.

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