Using Glassdoor, the site famous for candid employee reviews that break through corporate facades, is less anonymous than it used to be.
In July last year, the company added new social features integrated from Fishbowl, an app for work-related discussions acquired in 2021. Glassdoor has also changed its sign-up process to ask people to disclose their full name, job title, and employer; historically, it had required email addresses, but not names. In tests by WIRED, returning users who didn’t previously provide a full name are prompted to enter one by an impossible-to-dismiss pop-up that says, “Entering your real name is required to verify your profile but other users won’t see your name unless you choose to share it.”
Reviews of employers posted to Glassdoor remain anonymous, and people can post in its new discussion channels with only their work titles or employer visible, but the company’s policy of collecting and verifying real names has triggered concern among some users and privacy experts.
Alarm about those changes recently spread on social media, where several people described logging in to old Glassdoor accounts and allegedly finding their names had been added, they say, without their consent. WIRED reviewed emails in which one user was told by a Glassdor support representative that they would not be able to remove their name, and would have to delete their account if they wanted it gone. Glassdoor did not provide comment on these scenarios. When this reporter attempted to delete or change her name from a Glassdoor profile, the site instead provided a link to contact the help center to make changes.
Glassdoor’s help pages say it has to verify identities and employment information to “ensure that our users can engage in authentic, candid conversations with other professionals, coworkers, and company leaders in a safe space.” Having verified identity info on file could also make it more seamless for people to respond to the job ads listed on the platform. But trying to maintain that accuracy comes with a cost.
“You can’t both be verified and anonymous,” says Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a pro-privacy organization. “You can’t both be a social network and a confidential reporting space. You can do one of those well, or you can do both of them badly.”
The concerns over Glassdoor’s evolving policies on real names show how confusion can arise when a platform that many people visit only infrequently shifts its business model. Amanda Livingood, Glassdoor’s VP of corporate communications, provided a statement saying that integrating Fishbowl with Glassdoor created a broader set of services that user information is now shared across—a different model to that many people with older Glassdoor accounts signed up for. Fishbowl’s old terms of service state that people who signed up for accounts may have been required to add their names.
“When a user provides information, either during the sign-up process or by uploading a résumé, that information will automatically cross-populate between all Glassdoor services, including our community app Fishbowl,” Livingood says. “When using Glassdoor and Fishbowl, there is always the option to remain anonymous. Users can choose to be fully anonymous or reveal elements of their identity, like company name or job title, while using our community service.” Company help pages say real names and email addresses are used only for “verification purposes only.”
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