Blogging can be Dangerous to Your Career

More discussions today about the “dangers of blogging” at Street Talk and the Chronicles of Riddick Review.

Just remember that whatever you say online can (and will) come back to bite you in the posterior end of yer tushy some bright sunny day.

Case in point: A software contractor for the CIA, (Christine Axsmith), was fired for posting on a restricted-access blog that is hosted in the intelligence community’s classified intranet, known as Interlink.

“Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.” These are the words Axsmith seems to think got her fired. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano, speaking to the Washington Post, which broke the story, would offer only a general comment: “Postings should relate directly to the official business of the author and readers of the site, and … managers should be informed of online projects that use government resources. CIA expects contractors to do the work they are paid to do.”

Think you can just edit that old post later? Think again. Unless you put a “no cache” meta tag into your template Google will still have a searchable copy.

But remember that meta tags have a nasty habit of diminishing in importance over time as the search engines are always evolving. So don’t rely on this as a foolproof method.

Safe blogging!