So, you're angry with your boss. He makes what you think are stupid decisions, he doesn't listen to you, he's running down the department, he's favouring somebody over you. He just can't see how brilliant you are and he's ignoring you.

In the "old" days, it's likely you would have vented your frustration at your colleagues at the water cooler or lunch table. You would have told them what an idiot the boss was.

But things have changed - you're techno-savvy and you want to show it. Hey, you think, why not blog about the boss? Let the whole world know what an idiot he or she is and you decide to have some fun with it, you doctor some pictures perhaps, you make lurid comments. It feels so good to vent in this way. Bad idea, very bad idea.

As the manager, New Zealand, at executive recruitment firm Tanner Menzies, David Doyle, says: "Just think of the recent case when a video of police watching porn surfaced 20 years after the event.

"If there had been no documented evidence, there would have been no scandal.

"What you are doing by blogging your boss is creating a legacy for yourself, not your boss. And it doesn't look good to prospective employers."

Doyle points out what we all know by now _ prospective employers are finding the internet, particularly networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, to be a good way of finding out who you are before they employ you.

Beverley Main, chief executive of the Human Resources Institute, said recently: "More people are growing up with and using technology and it means young people have to be careful about the information they share about themselves because prospective employers will be looking."

Sam Morgan, founder and managing director of Trade Me, said "a significant trend" had developed for employers to use the kind of information easily gleaned from the sites (Facebook and MySpace) to vet potential employees.

"It's a real insight into people's characters," Morgan said.

The scary thing is - much of the information gets stored and can be accessed years later, which is what Doyle said he would be most concerned about.

Employers don't want to employ people who have a track record of disloyalty.

"The reality is, everyone bags their boss. They say `so and so is useless' or whatever. But they don't say that in a formal situation.

"Blogging is so new that it's a grey area. There's a line to cross between whinging vocally and publishing on the web. It can be bad form and the thing is, you may be 23 now and think it's OK to do this. You're not thinking of consequences. A blog is your remaining legacy of who you were when you wrote it. Is this what you want people to think you are when you are, say 30?