Illinois bars employers from asking passwords to social sites

CHICAGO -- Seeking to guard the privacy rights of the social networking generation, Illinois is making it illegal for employers to ask job applicants for passwords to their online profiles.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed the law Wednesday at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where several students lamented that online snooping by bosses has caused some to lose out on jobs and forced others to temporarily deactivate their online profiles.

Illinois is only the second state to have such a law on the books, and it leaves no exceptions – even for openings that require thorough background checks.

I have to admit I was a little shocked when I heard that companies ask for your social network password as part of the application. It's a pretty clear violation of privacy, but people did it anyway because they're desperate. But it's actually a breath of fresh air to see that it's being made illegal.

Now I'm sure that even though it's illegal now (in two states) that the interviewers will still "strongly recommend" that you give up your password, but at least people will have a better reason to say no.

Sorry if this has been posted before, I found nothing via Search

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Having no FB or what ever account helps

I would just tell them I don't dabble with that nonsense, it's not an employers business whether or not I use social media websites. Glad to see some laws being made that actually benefit the people.