You, uncensored
A small bit of personal information or a large picture album on your online profile has the potential to cause you trouble or embarrassment in office. Your colleague has access to information which you otherwise may not share with him, such as your relationship status, the communities you join, the fun applications you use, your photo albums, the videos you forward and the comments you write or receive on your Facebook wall or Orkut scrapbook. Thus making your online profile a fertile ground for office gossip.

Sofia Joseph, a 24-year-old content writer, was shocked when her boss asked her how long a leave she would take for her wedding. Sofia wasn’t even engaged. She later learned that a colleague was telling everyone in the office that since she had changed her relationship status on Orkut from “single” to “committed”, she was probably getting married soon.

Priyanka Sachar’s Facebook photographs in which she wore a bright red top, a black skirt and let loose her long tresses—a contrast to her Plain Jane image in office—invited comments such as “hot”, “seductress”, “nice legs”, “sultry” and “my screen is burning” from her male colleagues on the site. “Yes, I wanted to show my photos to my friends, but this was not what I expected,” says the 31-year-old project manager in a Gurgaon-based IT company. People from other departments came up to her and said the photographs were the “talk of the office” and gave her unsolicited advice to delete them.

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