Connecticut Senator Says Facebook Passwords Should Not Be Sought By Employers
 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1373945.html

I'm all for this. People have a private life for a reason.

However I think that if the Justice Department would actually enforce the law instead of letting it slide, like they mention in the article, this practice would go away. But however it gets done is good.

why would you even tell an employer you had a face book account? Is it required now? I have never been asked in all my job searches.

Isn't that the senator who tried to claim he was a vietnam vet?

I've not encountered this either but according to several sources it is a growing trend.

EDIT: I've read about employers asking for passwords OR requiring the prospective employee to add a "friend" from the personnel or HR dept so they can snoop around.

A few years ago a colleague of the wife got called in to HR to discuss a criminal conviction that he hadn't declared. :stare:

"What conviction?" he asked. :oops:

"It says on Facebook you've been fined £574, that means you must have been convicted. What was it for?" :stare:

:har: "You daft [insert expletive of choice], it's just a bit of fun on Facebook totting-up things like 'had sex in parents' bed' or 'been skinny dipping'.



Not that I've done those, obviously :roll: but they'll do for illustrative purposes. People need a private life.

That's why my FB account is nowhere near my real personality.
Who would guess that a guy named Garmin and was born in Fiji would be me :O:

That's the reason I eschew social media.

What is Facebook?:o

And then the interviewer thinks "Antisocial? Something to hide? Not keeping up with modern times?" and they go with the guy willing to give up his password.

That thing where police puts your mug shots. Chief of Police's personal recognition manual on local crooks.



:O:

There is talk (thankfully just talk at this point) that in the future, for security clearances, an applicant will have to disclose all online personas (just user names, not passwords).

Asking for passwords is completely unreasonable though.

If I was an employer, I'd ask the same question.
If the candidate would comply with my wish, I'd tell him to get lost! :x

Would you really trust someone with your company secrets who is willing to give away his right of privacy in a job interview? If they tell anything even without financial compansation, only because of a prospect for a job, you could probably buy Coca Cola's recipe from them for a bubble gum.

Now Facebook's weighing in on the issue, saying they may sue firms who request passwords:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news...-passwords.ars

Facebook's a scumbag company, but it's good to see them do something in their user's best interests for once.

Can I have access to the company's financial system first to make sure my pay for next year is secured?

This is just absurd!

:haha:

I was thinking along those lines as well. If we want full, and I mean full disclosure, then let's have full disclosure.

Recently one of my former students posted this on his facebook wall:

"Sometimes I only reason I get up in the morning is to get stoned".

Now while I share the concerns of folks here about the constant erosion of privacy in modern society I can't really blame an employer for wanting to know these things.

How does one know that he is being serious or is his joking around.:hmmm:

Maybe he is making a reference to the stresses of daily life in a joking manner and means get stoned by someone (a stoning,stones thrown at him figuratively speaking).

He would have to have some more obvious 4:20 and have a picture of him with a spliff or a bag of weed in his profile for me to verify that he is a pot head and there are plenty of
dummies doing that.

Besides why do they need to gain passwords most people use 12345 anyway.

Crap. Time to change my forum password.

Well I think if you ever met this kid Stealhead it would be pretty obvious that he was being serious. :) I used to have to go wake him up after lunch each day because he'd be zonked out from partying all night. More than once the smell that rushes out when he opened the door brought me back to the 1970's!

Besides it's not so much the drug use, although that is unacceptable too it's the lack of discretion. The way an employer would see it is if he's stupid enough to post something like that online, open to all i might add - no friendship or password needed, then he's probably also stupid enough to say something like it in front of a customer.

These Communications industries send their employees into peoples homes, they work in hospitals and pharmacies and airports. Such talk, even if joking, could cause the company big headaches if the wrong person heard it. At very least it could mean lost accounts. Customers, especially commercial ones, have no problem dropping vendors because one of their employees said something stupid like that.