What’s in Your Dossier?

Hide Your Tracks: We told you a little while ago about how the FTC approved this background-check company Social Intelligence Corp., which screens prospective employees’ social media and general online history. Creepy and invasive? Yes. That’s not how the company’s founder Max Drucker sees it. He asserts that the service is not about digging through people’s dirty laundry, but it merely puts together information that is readily available online. I don’t know that it’s so simple though; as this New York Times article points out, this kind of service can lead to all kinds of discrimination. One example of a screening that resulted in turning down a prospective employee that Drucker offered was an applicant who was found using Craigslist to look for OxyContin. Finding a Craigslist posting, where name and emails are often anonymized, takes some digging. It is definitely scary to think just how much of yourself is discoverable online; and thanks to Drucker and Social Intelligence, employers can have everything about you put into a nice, neat, little dossier. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next VC to launch a social media history cleanup service. NYT

Google+ Doesn’t Like Kids: A 10-year-old boy who had had a Gmail account since 2009 just signed up for Google+ — what kind of kid is this? — and was quickly kicked off not just the social network, but also had his Gmail account deleted. This is because he entered his age when setting up his Google+, revealing that he was in violation of Google’s terms of service, which require that users be over the age of 13. The kid was apparently brought to tears over the loss of his email account, according to his father’s blog post. Aww, poor kid. But maybe he’ll have time to do more kid stuff now. Should Google let kids have access to its email service? And another big question: should Google be able to control your email based on your Google+ activity? Gawker