>The Robert Johnson they kept being confused with wasn’t a man named Robert Johnson. It was a known alias of someone convicted of plotting to bomb a Hindu temple and a cinema in Toronto
Also, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, so you gotta be careful.
> And the industry’s answer to remote-hiring fraud is to run that class of check earlier, before a human is involved, and propagate the result across a network of employers.
Holy shit.
There’s a person on the SDN list that shares my first and last name, and has also lived in Estonia for a while. I’ve been repeatedly banned from Upwork for that, which is... well, I did once have to borrow money to not starve to death, but that’s okay I guess.
But I’ve also applied for hundreds of jobs and got maybe a couple interviews. I’ve thought that my experience isn’t good enough, or that I need to tweak my CV to please the LLM recruiter on the other end somehow.
If it turns out this whole time my applications got straight into trash because some fucker who’s like 20 years older than me and has a different middle name did some shit and got on a list, I’m fucking done.
(I did manage to land a job with a nice company. I assume they’ve done the background check, but didn’t even question me about the SDN, so I guess it’s not too hard to compare DoB and middle name after all. Ultimately it didn’t work out, but I love ya guys nonetheless <3)
Mercury unblocked my accounts because their founder is a very kind man who bothered to verify what the document actually says rather than falling back to, "Computer says no." But everywhere else? De nada. Computer says no.
And it's not even me. It's a fuzzy match with someone in their 50s. Doesn't matter. Computer says no.
And I can't "get off the list" because it's not me who's on the list. The computer will always say no.
In the long run, I'll be fine. I think. But I'll pay $100k+ by the time it's over. These systems are being steadily expanded, as the dumbest incarnations of themselves. We've gone from Thin Thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread to crappy fuzzy matches on shoddy data executed on with 0 diligence. It's the stupidest possible timeline.
I think many, many other people will be sharing our fate soon, which is partly why I've been writing about this slow rolling train wreck in motion in bits and pieces.
Honestly the best thing to do might be to change your name at this point. I'm glad my name is not common, this kind of issue is going to only get worse in the future.
Given a US senator was "on" the post-9/11 no-fly list for the same stupid reason, merely making noise and getting the press invlolved isn't enough to fix the deeper problem.
That is trading one problem for another: when the name on your birth certificate doesn't match the name on your government issued ID, certain other government entities tend to deny you services.
I would think that changing the last name only should be fine though, since up until somewhat recently, most women changed their last names when they got married, so most systems should be equipped to handle this.
It used to be very common for migrants to change their surnames, although less so now. There used to be a person who wrote about Scottish Lithuanians called John Millar, who was born as Jonas Stepšys. Noam Chomsky had said that his family's surname was substantially altered after they went to the USA.
Also, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, so you gotta be careful.
Think of how manny John Smiths there are?
How can this be the company started by Wozniak and Jobs ...
Holy shit.
There’s a person on the SDN list that shares my first and last name, and has also lived in Estonia for a while. I’ve been repeatedly banned from Upwork for that, which is... well, I did once have to borrow money to not starve to death, but that’s okay I guess.
But I’ve also applied for hundreds of jobs and got maybe a couple interviews. I’ve thought that my experience isn’t good enough, or that I need to tweak my CV to please the LLM recruiter on the other end somehow.
If it turns out this whole time my applications got straight into trash because some fucker who’s like 20 years older than me and has a different middle name did some shit and got on a list, I’m fucking done.
(I did manage to land a job with a nice company. I assume they’ve done the background check, but didn’t even question me about the SDN, so I guess it’s not too hard to compare DoB and middle name after all. Ultimately it didn’t work out, but I love ya guys nonetheless <3)
Mercury unblocked my accounts because their founder is a very kind man who bothered to verify what the document actually says rather than falling back to, "Computer says no." But everywhere else? De nada. Computer says no.
And it's not even me. It's a fuzzy match with someone in their 50s. Doesn't matter. Computer says no.
And I can't "get off the list" because it's not me who's on the list. The computer will always say no.
In the long run, I'll be fine. I think. But I'll pay $100k+ by the time it's over. These systems are being steadily expanded, as the dumbest incarnations of themselves. We've gone from Thin Thread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread to crappy fuzzy matches on shoddy data executed on with 0 diligence. It's the stupidest possible timeline.
I think many, many other people will be sharing our fate soon, which is partly why I've been writing about this slow rolling train wreck in motion in bits and pieces.
The simplest solution is to change my phone number. But
a) why should I have to? it’s my number, dammit!
b) how many accounts have 2FA? if I changed my number, what if I miss updating one that’s important?
c) it could happen again
If I change my number, however, that is the simplest way to solve the problem. It’s just, do I want to?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-kennedys-airport-adventure/