I love technology. Love everything about it and a good deal of the time as soon as I find out about some new service or software I’m playing with it minutes later. Sometimes though you need to think before you launch yourself online; especially when it comes to publicly available information about you.

Today I learned about Twitres. It looks like a really cool service. They are on Twitter if you feel like following @Twitres

My initial reaction was “Wow! How cool! I can’t wait to share this with my clients!” You can upload your resume and get feedback from the world. The immediacy of it all excited me. And, then I had a thought. From a privacy perspective is this what you want as a jobseeker?

There is of course, the problem with identity theft. Here you are giving your name, address, telephone, and all your work details to the world. Would it really be all that hard for a complete stranger to use this information to obtain birth certificates, a new driver’s licence, or re-route your credit card account to a new address?

When you send a resume to a recruiter or employer, only a few select people see it. Do you really want all this information to be spread around the world? I’m not entirely sure this is a great idea, but I do suggest this as a minimum. Remove your contact details to just include an email address. Give people intent on ID theft a bit more work to do rather than wrapping “project you” up with a nice bow on top.

My second privacy concern is your current employer. Most jobseekers tend to want to keep their job hunt a secret from their current employers. I’m not sure uploading a resume for the world to see is really going to help with that! Your resume may also include information that is company confidential. Would your employer appreciate knowing that budgets, sales figures and internal control issues are floating around for the world to see?

I still think the idea is clever and innovative. It just needs to be balanced with a cool head. Think before uploading to this or any online service. Think who could be seeing it, what they may do with the information and whether your propensity for broadcasting confidential data could be viewed as a negative by people in your industry.

Be job smart and protect yourself.