Category: Modern problems

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A little PSA

I know, You’re thinking to yourself, “what the hell could this guy have to say?”

I get it, you’re inundated with PSA type crap all day long.

What pronoun to use, don’t appropriate another culture for your halloween costume (No matter how funny it might be), don’t speak ill of any culture (unless it’s white folks), don’t speak ill of any gender (unless it’s cis male), you know…

The usual.

Well this post is not about any of that. So read on my intrepid friends.

Here’s something to think about.

Digital 1S 0S ON or OFF1If your personal devices are connected to a computer network at your place of business, any data sent from those devices is subject to monitoring. Now here’s the kicker…

Even if you aren’t looking at porn on your devices, but you’ve got your email running receiving that hot porn email list, or one of those nifty dating applications like Tender that might have naked photos, updating in the background, technically you’re downloading or attempting to download inappropriate material on the corporate network.

Yep! I know, shitty isn’t it? Guess what? The IT folks can see that data as it’s flowing over their systems. They can even localize it to your device or area of the corporate campus.

So if you’re on naked photo mailing lists, or Nudists international, or Filthy Gangbangs R Us, or whatever, even if you’re not looking at the site, your phone, or your tablet is. It’s guilt by association. Technically text messages could fall into the same category.

In other words, you could be fired because your device, sitting in your pocket, backpack, briefcase, or purse, was accessing naughty material. Your only defense is to say, “No I wasn’t” and the IT folks may have records, time and date stamped to the contrary. In other words, you’re screwed.

“Oh Guru of technology how might we prevent this?”, you ask.

Simplest way;

Don’t have those apps on your phone or tablet.

Another simple way;

NEVER connect to your corporate network with personal devices. This will force your devices to use their cellular connection. Make sure you have an unlimited plan though.

A more complex method;

Gf logo horzAlways use a VPN when you’re away from home. There are some who suggest using a VPN at all times. I don’t. My VPN comes on automatically when I’m out of the house and using an external WiFi or hardline network connection.

VPNs are cheap and effective. They’re relatively easy to use and work pretty well. If you’re involved in illegal activities they’re not going to protect you from prosecution, so keep it legal okay?

I use Vypr from Golden Frog. Before you ask, I pay a yearly subscription and don’t really notice a delay (or the expense) as long as the connection I’m using is reasonably fast.

The down side to VPNs is that sometimes corporations, and public WiFi access locations will stop VPN traffic. The say it’s for the protection of their employees or clients, that’s bullshit.

They’re blocking the VPN traffic because they’re protecting themselves. Seems that there are some laws or the illusion of laws that suggest a corporation allowing “Illegal” traffic over their networks can be held accountable.

The question is, “what is illegal?” and since they can’t monitor an encrypted connection, companies often block VPNs. This is especially true on employee accessible networks.

Unless you’re familiar with what’s going on you could end up wasting a lot of time troubleshooting a non-existent problem. (I say that from experience). Since the VPN comes up automatically it’s easy to forget it’s there when you hit a Starbucks or whatever.

So it’s possible that with a VPN you’re not going to get connected to the internet while you’re at work. In which case if you’ve just gotta see that filthy picture, turn off WiFi and download it over the cell connection. I’d recommend waiting until your lunch hour or you’re off work but hey, I’m not living your life and you get to choose how your day or career goes.

The point is, keep all your personal shit… Personal!

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And we move step by step toward the Orwellian Nightmare…

IMG 0882As I’ve mentioned again and again Job searches are difficult especially if you’re an older worker.

Now as if to increase the difficulty, it’s become commonplace for recruiters to use your social media profile to determine your fitness for a particular position. 

If the recruiter finds something questionable in your social media, you’re not going to get the job. This apparently includes something as simple as a picture.

A news piece out of Texas where a job applicant was shamed over a photo in her instagram and didn’t get the job she was applying for demonstrates just how bad it’s gotten.

Those of us that don’t do a lot on social media or those of us who have no social media accounts are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. 

I found one line in the article particularly telling. 

“Go on with your bad self and do whatever in private. But this is not doing you any favors in finding a professional job.”

Uhh, you social media account is your social media account and it’s not the business of any employer to shame you especially for something as innocuous as a bikini photo.

This isn’t the first instance of social media being used to cause harm. This is simply the latest in a long line of egregious actions on the part of employers, or media.

I personally don’t want to live my life under a microscope. Yet it appears according to Linkedin that I must. 

I ask again where does it stop?

Will we end up with corporate “Social Purity Standards”, How about a GATTACA type society where genetic purity is required to work at all.

These articles about social media accounts all say you must be careful what you post, that makes sense, after all as my grandmother used to say, “You don’t air your dirty laundry in public.” 

But social media is something that you share between you and your friends. It should be something that allows you to keep in touch with a select group of people. That is, if you engage in it at all. My few friends and I typically communicate via text messages, or phone calls not because we have anything to hide but because that’s the way that is most comfortable.

We’re guys, sometimes we say off color things and honestly some comments if taken out of context could be blown way out of proportion.

Back in the stone age when I was in school we used to have object lessons taught to us by our teachers. One of those object lessons was on the nature of gossip. The lesson started by whispering something into the ear of the person sitting next to you. They whispered the same thing to the person next to them, and so on.

By the time the message got to the 15th person it was completely different and 100% wrong.

For example if a buddy of mine were to say, “I’m living in a tent in the back yard for the duration of October,” because he couldn’t stand his wife and daughter’s love of Pumkin Spice EVERYTHING as a joke. He may even have said it in front of his wife on a phone call which all involved would have laughed about.

If that was in a social media post and taken out of context, that same friend would be inundated with questions about how his separation was going and was he okay and what a bitch his wife was. Likewise on his wife’s social media her friends would be rallying around her and talking about what a son of a bitch he was and that she was better off without him.

It could easily be taken out of context.

3nd friend asks 2nd friend about him and short reply is “Well he’s out in the tent in the back yard with the dog”

3rd friend knows based on time of year that it’s a joke about pumpkin spice.

But an acquaintance of #1 and friend of number 3 sees the post and reads into it, “trouble in the marriage with divorce imminent,” before long the whole thing spins out of control and a lot more energy is spent correcting the misunderstanding than was spent creating the original post.

This is why so many older folks just aren’t that interested in social media. It’s not that they don’t know how to use it, they know how wrong things can go, and how quickly. It’s a lesson we all learned back in the early days of telephones when we all had “Party Lines”.

Party Lines were the single greatest source of neighborhood gossip in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s.

If you were filing for divorce, you went to the attorney’s office, you sure didn’t talk about it on the phone. Rumors often got started just because you made an appointment with a doctor, lawyer, or accountant on a party line.

Social media is the “Party Line” of this age. The irony is, back in the day, we all paid handsomely to have private lines as they became available in our neighborhoods.

Now, people flock to social media to post details about their lives that should be private and yet they’re sharing it all with whole world.

This makes me wonder if facebook still lists me as a user, or for that matter myspace. Those accounts have been closed for years, (According to facebook or myspace,) but I have no proof that another facebook or myspace user isn’t able to see what I posted before I decided social media wasn’t for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time for legislation to prevent corporate entities using social media to spy on their employees. God knows the last thing we need is more legislation, but perhaps it’s time to have a very clear division between corporate social media and personal social media and a “Never the twain shall meet” set of laws.

In the case of the young lady who was shamed by a potential employer, because there was a picture of her in a bikini on her instagram…

I hope she sues the shit out of them.

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New OS… New features and challenges

macos catalina large.jpgMaybe I am a fanboi.

Apple released Catalina yesterday and I upgraded my computer immediately.

Still having some issues that I’m ironing out, but generally speaking the upgrade went perfectly.  I’ve continued the job search without missing a beat and have been taking breaks from the job search to tweak little settings here and there.

Stability and speed are good and some of the newer features I’m liking, while others just seem to be (at this point) a little more complicated than they need to be.

Part of that may be a learning curve in that I’m reaching for things where they were and not where they are.

I thought I’d eliminated all the 32 bit applications from my system a while ago, but I was wrong. Catalina found several apps that were still 32 bit. Thankfully I don’t use them very much so it’s not “Mission Critical” For me to jump right on replacing them.

There is one that may be a stumbling block but i’m probably going to be able to Create a VMware environment for that one. Although when I went to see if there was an update, I found that the company is only just now working on a 64 bit version and then I realized that my copy of the application was 3 years old with no updates since I purchased it.  Really???? Come on guys, it’s not like you didn’t have time to prepare.

The last of the backups is nearing completion. There are advantages to having multiple backups, But the disadvantage is that you have to update multiple backups and that can be time consuming. This is especially true if one of your backups is a little on the large size and the system decides that it needs to thin it out. Grrrrr.

In any case things are progressing as they should.

On to the next challenge.

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I begin to understand the Europeans privacy concerns

icon-privacy-1_0.pngNot that I had that many questions about their reasoning. 

I just spent about an hour and a half cleaning up the “Subscriptions” in my Outlook.com account.

Most of these subscriptions appear to have been generated by my reading an email from one of the many offshore headhunters. I refuse to call them placement agents because they’re not actually helpful at all, and they’re not contracted placement agents for any of the companies they’re supposedly contacting me about.

What I found interesting is that each of these subscriptions was associated with a personal email address and I don’t recall doing anything but reading the email. So obviously there is some backend process running on the outlook server side of things. 

None of these subscriptions appeared in my local email clients. My computer is secure but the surprising thing is that Microsoft allows this on their servers. Oh and by the way you have to delete them all individually.

Fun NOT!

This all started because of LinkedIn. I got curious about where they were getting some of the “Suggested” contacts. How do they know who I know, if those people aren’t actually on LinkedIn? 

To answer that question I started digging. As I looked at the suggested contacts I noticed that there were many from a very old contact list. For example, there were people that I haven’t interacted with for many years. Yet there were also more current people. I realized that the list was being refreshed, but from where? 

Then as I dug around I found out that the list was being populated from my Outlook.com account. This is an email account that I use but I don’t store a current contact list there. That was when I found out that LinkedIn may not have a way to disconnect or shield your contact list from them. Once you’ve shared it, you can’t say stop. LinkedIn periodically refreshes the list presenting you with “New” potential contacts to connect with.

The problem is, what if you’re trying to protect the privacy of the people that you know. After all, if you’re interested in privacy, shouldn’t you also be concerned about the privacy of the people in your contact list?

Then I logged into Outlook.com and found the source list, I also discovered that deleting all your contacts on Outlook.com isn’t as easy as it might appear. While I could select all the contacts with one checkbox, I couldn’t select delete. de-selecting all the contacts and selecting one, or a few, would allow me to click delete. I found that I could select about 35-30 entries and delete them in bulk.

Then you have to go to the “Deleted Contacts” folder and do the deletion all over again.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the LinkedIn site to refresh and see if the contacts will be removed.

While checking around the Outlook site to find out if there was any way for me to simply disconnect LinkedIn, I stumbled upon the long list of “Subscriptions” that I don’t recall ever saying I’d like to sign up for.

By the way, LinkedIn doesn’t show up as an authorized application in Outlook’s site. So you can’t sever the connection simply from this side either.

I suppose it’s an oversight on the part of the LinkedIn folks, perhaps the Outlook folks, perhaps both

It does seem strange that there isn’t anyway to wipe or stop the personal contact list sharing.

I suppose sometime long ago when I created the LinkedIn account I must have misread the terms of sharing my contacts. I don’t think I understood that this was a permanent feature. I think, I believed it was a one time use.

I suppose this should serve as a cautionary tale.

If you’re interested in privacy, yours, or others make sure that you can revoke access to anything you’ve shared.

I think I begin to understand why the Europeans are such sticklers about maintaining control over their data.

We should be as vigilant here, but our lawmakers don’t have a clue about technology. It’s beyond them and will continue to be beyond them until they admit they don’t know technology. Hopefully at that point they’ll wise up and actually hire or appoint people with the knowledge and right skills to actually come up with a coherent policy on matters of privacy, data-sharing, and technology in general. 

That won’t be a perfect solution, but it might be a step in the right direction.

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Resume Rewrite…

I paid a resume service to rewrite my resume…

I was looking for something that would make it through all the HR filters and get me actually in front of a hiring manager so that the real discussion could begin.

The rewrite is a more standard (Un-Unique) resume. Not that my previous resume was all that flashy but it did have some elements designed to catch the eye and hopefully stand out a little. In retrospect those element were probably being lost anyway since the HR systems pretty much strip any non-standard elements making all resumes homogenous when they’re printed anyway.

The rewording of my experience and abilities is not comfortable for me. There are lots of words that are somewhat ambiguous and kind of “over the top”.  I realize that a resume is like a sales brochure but some of this is like the old days when software companies sold nothing but “vaporware”. 

“This new version of our software with its muffler bearing algorithm will increase your accounting efficiency by 1000% when properly implemented*. (Implementation is dependent on your server being more advanced than the NSA)” 

Why do we do this? Why not simply tell the truth?

I’ve got a ton of experience across a wide range of systems and topics. Obviously I’ve been around the block a few times and Generally speaking, as an older worker what I don’t know, or remember, I do know how to find or figure out.

I sent the initial copy back dripping in red-line. I paid for someone whose command of English was better than mine, so why did the initial draft need me to edit it for continuity, grammar, and word usage?

This whole resume thing is a mess anyway. We’re now writing our resumes to get past computerized filters, so that HR people can find the keywords the Hiring manager mentioned, and pass the document on to a hiring manager who is probably asking for something the HR people don’t understand in the first place.

What’s the likelihood, in this system,  that the interviewee is exactly what the interviewer is looking for? Yet HR is trying to apply exacting standards to the variability of human beings.

And as usual, the HR people really like to find your social media so they can figure out if you’re popular enough to join their team. After all we only want to hang with, or hire the cool kids right?

I’ve often thought  about creating a completely fictitious social media profile just so the HR people would have something to look at. I could do it, I’m a fiction writer after all. I haven’t because I don’t want to create and maintain a character.

In the wee hours of the night though, I’ve put the character together as a sketch that looks something like this;

  • Democrat or Bernie Sanders supporter 
  • Pro Gun control
  • Shocked and outraged that machine guns are freely available
  • Rabidly Anti Trump
  • Habitual commenter on Twitter, Facebook, and instagram. Follows the mainstream opinion, sharing outrage over the cause of the day and remarkably silent when any one of those causes happens to be disproven.
  • Social Justice warrior
  • Likes puppies and kittens, sends cutesy video clips frequently.
  • Live in a Hipster area
  • Complains bitterly about their name being misspelled on their Starbucks order. It’s Raven with a “Y” for goodness sake.

That’s just the beginning of the character, it still needs to be fleshed out.

I’ve thought that it might form a basis for an experiment. 

What would happen if you created three characters with equal qualifications and ages and the only difference between them was their social media feeds? Two characters interests overlap, differing in only, say their opinions about Trump. One is Rabid and the other isn’t actually a supporter but isn’t as much of a hater. One mentions how much they don’t like Antifa rallies and the other attends. The third character has no social media presence at all.

Would there be a measurable difference in their rate of interviews? 

If a demonstrable bias could be seen, could that bias be used to get back to a real hiring process instead of something akin to prom queen voting?

I doubt it.

Which is why I normally think about stuff like this in the wee hours of the night when I’m trying to bore myself back to sleep.

I’m thinking I’m going to tell the resume people that I’m not pleased. I don’t think I got equivalent value for the money. The more I look at this, the more it fills me with revulsion.

… improve organizational resilience, posture, and management …

Ugh!

However, I have gained a greater insight into why so many of the memos and “important notifications” at my previous company read like a poorly abridged thesaurus vomited on the page.