Proposed laws would forbid employers from asking for job seekers' social media passwords

Proposed laws would forbid employers from asking for job seekers' social media passwords

It seems from this article that employers are going a bit to far with the privacy thing !!

Some job applicants are being asked to provide their Facebook (and others)
username and password during interviews !!


Even some government agencies are doing this !!

Legality questions are being raised and some States are considering legislation.


Published March 20, 2012
Associated Press
FoxNews

SEATTLE – When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password.

Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn't see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.

Bassett refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn't want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. But as the job market steadily improves, other job candidates are confronting the same question from prospective employers, and some of them cannot afford to say no.

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person's social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around. .....

We Want Your Facebook name and password please !!


What kind of a life are these nosy people living anyway ?

What happens if we want theirs ??

Next they'll want your underwear brand and size !!


Sick People !!

and THEY already have a job !!

I'm glad that there is going to be legislation against this, because with the way Facebook is used these days, there is so much information on there it could definitely be considered dangerous - and people want to be able to express themselves freely without fear of losing a job or not getting one.

I use my Facebook account on occasion to talk about politics, and some of the things I say might not fly well with either liberals or conservatives, depending on the topic. And with the new timeline feature, people can check what you have said over the past years - and seeing as I signed up for Facebook when it was first available at my college, I have some content on my timeline that is definitely college oriented, if you catch my drift.

If Facebook starts being used for job profiling or government spying, we would pretty much have no privacy and I might decide to delete my account. Unfortunately, that would almost be like committing social suicide and I'd lose all of those memories and photos. :/

But what happens if you dont have a faecebook or other account, will they call you a liar and still not offer you the job. Just goes to show it's all data mining

I would tell them sure. You just have to pay me for that level of information. $50K sounds like a fair number, after all $50K would be considerably less than the legal battle and court of public opinion backlash over treating potential employees as property. Involuntary Servitude laws and all that, let alone the legal battle should I happen to not be hired for whatever reason due to some sort of discrimination in which your company would have to make part of the public record. You will have the password when the check clears.

Then change the password one hour later. Easy as pie. Heck, it might become a very good money making deal just going on interviews.

reply to post by FFS4000


Definitely data mining. Very effective data mining. Very scary. Oh man - be required to have a Facebook account to get a job, geez.

I would ask for theirs. It is not enough that they feel safe I want to feel safe as well.

I don't know if the company I will apply to is a terrorist front

This is good, I would have a huge problem getting a job if I asked this question. Not because I have something to hide but because i think my potential employers would not believe I am NOT one of the millions of brainless sheep people that have a facebook,myspace or other volunteer based big brother spying program. It is funny when i tell people I don't have one they either don't believe me or ask to take my picture so they can start a profile for me, it really feels like invasion of the pod people.

reply to post by xuenchen


The interesting thing about this is the fact that a good chunk of the information on your facebook page is already protected by the DOL. An employer is not allowed to ask you age, race, religion, political affiliation style questions.

All you have to do is reply in a manner that would suggest their question would lead to information that they are legally bound to not ask and if they pursue you have every right to report them to the board of labor. A more political reply is in order however. Maybe something along the lines of.

"Although it is important for you to verify my character I'm afraid that my profile would allow you to garner information about me that is protected by the department of labor and could be misconstrued as an act of discrimination. To protect both our interests, I've provided X amount of character references that I believe should be sufficient."


I do think it's a good idea that they are proposing a manner of keeping this information private/protected.

Has anyone actually experienced this behavior by a potential
or even a current employer ?

I know someone who was asked this at an interview.
The person told them he has no social accounts at all.

They said OK...... and he never got the job.

A friend of his who does work at the same place
told him they hired someone who seems incompetent !!

I don't have a FB
but if i did and a job
asked for my pass they
could take that job and shove it..

Originally posted by xuenchen

some of them cannot afford to say no.

This part stood out for me. I've reluctantly signed contracts and have adjusted my personal life just so that I can survive. It's straight up corporate tyranny. They got us "workers" by the balls. Our desire to survive is being used against us at every turn. I can't even describe how resentful this makes me feel. I feel like I've been punished for simply being born.

I don't understand the logic of this request for a password.

Why can't they just log into Facebook and look at my page, (I don't have a FB account, BTW) and look at everything I've posted? Why do they need the keys? With a password, couldn't they post on my page, pretending to be me? Couldn't I just change the password as soon as I gave it them?

If someone asked for my ATS password, I would tell them to get their own and then look me up under my user name. They don't need my password to see everything I've posted, but, they would need it to post under my user name.

Simply disgusting. Bad enough we have to be on the clock while off the clock and cant bitch about a cruddy day at work or how our fellow human bosses/fellow workers suck. It's very unfair and now THIS????

I keep thinking I should delete my facebook pages but it's like..... my friends and fam and pics are on it and....

but then again, we all survived before those days. :/

reply to post by xuenchen


Ya maybe it's time to ditch facebook. Just say no, I don't have facebook. But still, it's a shame we even have to think of having laws because employers feel they have a right to invade our privacy. We are not supposed to give our passwords to anybody for anything. For crying out loud, what is wrong with people.

Originally posted by circlemaker

Originally posted by xuenchen

some of them cannot afford to say no.

This part stood out for me. I've reluctantly signed contracts and have adjusted my personal life just so that I can survive. It's straight up corporate tyranny. They got us "workers" by the balls. Our desire to survive is being used against us at every turn. I can't even describe how resentful this makes me feel. I feel like I've been punished for simply being born.

edit on 3/20/2012 by circlemaker because: spelling

I've seen some pretty scary software apps. I cannot now remember the name of the specific software, but I saw it at a presentation, and people afterward were talking amongst themselves how draconian it was. It's basically software that lets employers watch every single thing you do online at work, but this one was really invasive.

Originally posted by ThirdEyeofHorus
I've seen some pretty scary software apps. I cannot now remember the name of the specific software, but I saw it at a presentation, and people afterward were talking amongst themselves how draconian it was. It's basically software that lets employers watch every single thing you do online at work, but this one was really invasive.

Oh yeah I've worked at companies that did that. Once I saw a supervisor looking at someone else's screen from his computer. Another time at a different company a supervisor replied to a personal (and revealing) email I sent to my then-fiance.

The government is held more accountable than corporations (and that's saying something) because we have to sign away our rights and personal privacy in order to eat and have shelter.

Asking for a Facebook password is wrong and is no more appropriate than the employer asking how many people you have slept with and if he could go through your underwear drawer. But to be fair and honest, if you are using a company computer on company time your employer has every right to check on THEIR computer on THEIR property on THEIR time. You really can't have it both ways.

I wanted to add that recently CNN just featured an article that specified Facebook is on the side of the user. They sustain that an employer asking for usernames and passwords is against Facebook's policies and could also open the employer up to legal problems stemming from discrimination. Nice article even if it is from CNN.

www.cnn.com...

Originally posted by HellstormRising
I wanted to add that recently CNN just featured an article that specified Facebook is on the side of the user. They sustain that an employer asking for usernames and passwords is against Facebook's policies and could also open the employer up to legal problems stemming from discrimination. Nice article even if it is from CNN.

www.cnn.com...

Lies. Facebook is on the side of facebook, if employers were willing to pay to see the users information you would see facebook jumping through hoops to get contracts with every corporation they could. Facebook IS bigbrother and all the drones signed up.

Might as well just hand those passwords over. Credit checks, background checks, drug tests, checking your facebook it is all the same. We have already allowed business to invade our private lives in every possible way just to get a job and people have gone along with it because it gave them an advantage over someone else. And by doing so have undermined the American idea just to get a job.