Job interview? Fork over Facebook Password

[Travis]

Seriously if someone even asked this in an interview I'm pretty sure my reaction would not only make sure I don't get the job they'd have to escort me out and put up a warning to not let me back in.

 

[Skepticemea]

Would you employ someone with such a poor grasp of systems security?

 

[Almo]

Of course there are boundaries. My point is that if it comes from your "private" Facebook page then it has already been shared with one company.

What? This reminds me of people who think the Sun has an iron crust.

Even if this were a valid argument (it isn't), giving them your password is wrong on so many levels. I'll only detail one: having your password allows them to post things as if they were you. Why would they want to? That's not the point: they can.

Because of this trend I've set my profile to mostly friends only. Otherwise an employer can see my religion, politics, and sexuality when they are otherwise not allowed to ask for such things.

This is a good point. I might do this as well, thinking about it.

 

[The Greater Fool]

There are some important aspects of this that I have not seen mentioned in the thread so far. Do these facts make a difference? This is what I recall from an NPR story earlier today or yesterday...

- The prospective employee was actually a returning employee, from some sort of LOA. So this was not an initial, off the street, sort of thing.

- The job the employee was returning to was a prison guard. So security and intimately private contacts were going to be, and were, explored also.

- There was going to be a thorough investigation into his life by real investigators talking to his real acquantences in real life.

- The specific purpose of the FB request was to see if he had any gang affiliations or contacts that would be inappropriate.

- Basically, the employee was going through a tough security screening. Many of the analogous 'invasions of privacy' in this thread, were in fact (and did) occur.

The guy did get his job, and has since left to pursue other opportinities (school, IIRC).

 

[gumboot]

There are some important aspects of this that I have not seen mentioned in the thread so far. Do these facts make a difference? This is what I recall from an NPR story earlier today or yesterday...

- The prospective employee was actually a returning employee, from some sort of LOA. So this was not an initial, off the street, sort of thing.

- The job the employee was returning to was a prison guard. So security and intimately private contacts were going to be, and were, explored also.

- There was going to be a thorough investigation into his life by real investigators talking to his real acquantences in real life.

- The specific purpose of the FB request was to see if he had any gang affiliations or contacts that would be inappropriate.

- Basically, the employee was going through a tough security screening. Many of the analogous 'invasions of privacy' in this thread, were in fact (and did) occur.

The guy did get his job, and has since left to pursue other opportinities (school, IIRC).

Actually there's a couple of examples in the article in the OP, which is talking about the practise in general rather than a specific isolated case. But in the case of Robert Collins, his example has actually led not only to a change of agency policy, but Maryland are now in the motion of putting into place legislation that would ban public agencies from asking for access to social networking sites.

The way I see it, there's two separate issues at stake here.

One is a privacy issue, which is what right your work place has to access your private life outside work. I gather US privacy law is pretty weak. Thankfully in my country privacy law is incredibly robust, and the law is pretty black and white on things like this; what you do outside work is none of your employer's business, and none of the prospective employer's business, and if they try to start making it their business they're in for a whole lot of hurt.

But the second issue is specifically on giving your social network password to someone else. That is actually a Federal Crime according to the Department of Justice (as is logging into someone else's account), and therefore, irrespective of whether we can think of justification for a workplace having such access or not, the practise is illegal.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

This is a good point. I might do this as well, thinking about it.

I've been a few employment seeking events and programs, and they all told us to clear out our social media. Even if we set our things to private, our friends might talk about what they did with us on their pages.

Checking an applicant's Facebook profile is becoming a standard part of the hiring process, making it critical for Facebook users to use common sense on how they present themselves on the site.
U.K. business psychology firm OPP recently reported that 56 percent of employers now review the Facebook profiles of job applicants, helping them weed out candidates from pools of resumes.

Meanwhile, another study from researchers at Northern Illinois University, the University of Evansville and Auburn University focused on evaluations of Facebook-using college students with jobs, finding a strong correlation between job performance and ratings of Facebook profiles based on personality traits such as conscientiousness, agreeability and intellectual curiosity.

The findings indicate Facebook users should think of their profiles as extensions of their resumes, careful not to look too good -- or too bad -- to merit a second look, according to a Time Moneyland column by management consultant Dan Schwabel.

...

Of course, the easiest way to avoid any potential problems is to not be active on Facebook. But that would be a mistake, according to Schwabel, since these days any and all job-seekers should be on the social network if they want to appear relevant to employers. A Facebook profile that is only half-complete or barely used looks suspicious, as if the user is trying to hide something or is not fully literate in using social media.

Still, the emphasis on a professional Facebook profile only marks the growing importance of social media and online identity, in all aspects of an increasingly public life.

Linky.

 

[Almo]

I won't be that paranoid, but the advice isn't necessarily bad. Since I first joined FB, I've never posted anything that would embarass me since I considered it to be public, so I'm not that worried about it.

 

[Arus808]

Doesn't matter:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/face...ur-passwords-and-your-privacy/326598317390057

Protecting Your Passwords and Your Privacy

by Facebook and Privacy on Friday, March 23, 2012 at 8:32am.

In recent months, we've seen a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people's Facebook profiles or private information. This practice undermines the privacy expectations and the security of both the user and the user's friends. It also potentially exposes the employer who seeks this access to unanticipated legal liability.


The most alarming of these practices is the reported incidences of employers asking prospective or actual employees to reveal their passwords. If you are a Facebook user, you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends. We have worked really hard at Facebook to give you the tools to control who sees your information.

More at link.

And a Senator is might mad at this practice, and is looking to get a law passed that is similar to the banning of polygraph tests:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74325.html

Sen. Richard Blumenthal has a status update for employers who ask job seekers for access to their private Facebook accounts: He’s writing a bill to outlaw the practice.
The Connecticut Democrat and former state attorney general told POLITICO that those kind of requests from prospective employers amount to an "unreasonable invasion of privacy" for those looking for work. Blumenthal said it ought to be prohibited, just like other banned employment practices such as administering polygraph tests to screen applicants.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74325.html#ixzz1pxcD03V0
​

 

[Complexity]

Then again, you've already forked it over to another company: Facebook.

So much for privacy.

Nope. Never had a Facebook account, never will.

(Damn! I am on JREF...)

Any company wanting to behave in this way isn't a place I'd want to work.

 

[crimresearch]

As the quoted story says, they are not really into acquiring a password. If an applicant balks at the request, then the interviewer simply asks the applicant to sign in to his or her account so that the interviewer can look at all the information on the applicant's Facebook page.

Yes, the interviewer could be capturing all the typing on the company's computer and could then snag the password, but these companies are more interested in your attitudes towards previous employers and your past or ongoing criminal activities and your religious, philosophical, and political viewpoints that might effect our job performance. Of course, I agree with most of the previous posters that what is on one's private section of Facebook is none of their damned business but I just wanted to emphasize that they are not trying to phish passwords to mess with applicant information.

Are you talking about the OP article?

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...

 

[crimresearch]

This has been pointed out here earlier, now it is Facebook doing the pointing out.

http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-warns-employers-dont-ask-passwords-163806953.html

Amid an upsurge in reports that employers are increasingly asking job applicants to hand over passwords to their Facebook and other social media accounts as part of the hiring process, word comes down from Facebook: don’t do it.

Facebook has two lines of reasoning. For users, surrendering a password not only compromises a user’s privacy, but the privacy of all their Facebook friends as well. Not to mention, sharing a password violates Facebook’s terms of service and could be grounds for account termination.

For employers, the consequences might be even more expensive: employers could be setting themselves up for lawsuits if they fail to treat information gleaned from prospective employees’ Facebook accounts as confidential

 

[Finster]

Looks like the slope was at least a little slippery - somebody has now been fired for not turning over a Facebook password.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...-aide-fired-refusing-hand-over-172305406.html

Seems like this should not be OK but I don't pretend to know the legal niceties.

 

[Mark6]

Looks like the slope was at least a little slippery - somebody has now been fired for not turning over a Facebook password.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...-aide-fired-refusing-hand-over-172305406.html

Seems like this should not be OK but I don't pretend to know the legal niceties.

quote:

Teachers have gotten in trouble for Facebook status messages before, but in Hester's case, it's her refusal to hand over her password that actually got her fired. One of the supervisors from the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District (ISD), the regional service center for education in Michigan, even wrote her a letter when she refused to give them her password for the third time. Part of the letter read: "... in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly." Lewis Cass wanted to put Hester on a paid administrative leave before they fired her, but she chose to go on an unpaid leave because she believes she did nothing wrong. She plans to use the letter she received to sue the school district.

I expect to see more legal cases like this

 

[crimresearch]

quote:

I expect to see more legal cases like this

Yeah if the employer was dumb enough to put it in writing that the reason she was fired was for refusing to breach the TOS, she might have a case.

 

[luchog]

I can't believe people actually think this is something new. Asking for, or googling for, employees' social media sites is hardly unusual. It's been going on for the better part of a decade; and there have been several high-profile cases of employees being fired for things they've said or done in Livejournal, Myspace, Friendster, personal blogs, etc. And not all of them were for saying derogatory things about the company, some were for being associated with the wrong group, or being openly gay.

Facebook is just the most recent target; although asking for passwords is highly ususual. Normally they'd just ask for usernames so they could keep up on what their employees were doing and saying on their own time.

But even aside from this, it's hardly a new process. It's only relatively recently that employers have been prohibited from including morals clauses in employment contracts and policies.

That's why I make sure that I keep my online presence and my professional presence completely separate. There is nothing in any of my online sites aside from LinkedIn that could be easily traced back to me (doing so would require breaking a law or two).

 

[Travis]

Someone that would ask for you Facebook password is scum. I hope they are sterile so that they aren't infecting the rest of the world with their defective seed.

 

[Travis]

DISCLAIMER: Travis does not endorse forced sterilization. Even of Facebook privacy invading nutbags.

 

[Checkmite]

I can't believe people actually think this is something new. Asking for, or googling for, employees' social media sites is hardly unusual. It's been going on for the better part of a decade; and there have been several high-profile cases of employees being fired for things they've said or done in Livejournal, Myspace, Friendster, personal blogs, etc. And not all of them were for saying derogatory things about the company, some were for being associated with the wrong group, or being openly gay.

Facebook is just the most recent target; although asking for passwords is highly ususual. Normally they'd just ask for usernames so they could keep up on what their employees were doing and saying on their own time.

Nobody is surprised at employers watching their employees' public activities online. It's not even really that controversial; it's foolish to claim that certain people don't have a right to take notice of or consider things you willingly make public. Actual civil rights issues (being fired for being gay, etc) of course are handled via the courts.

It's specifically the asking for passwords, thus gaining access to non-public, private activities that people are objecting to.

 

[gumboot]

I can't believe people actually think this is something new. Asking for, or googling for, employees' social media sites is hardly unusual. It's been going on for the better part of a decade; and there have been several high-profile cases of employees being fired for things they've said or done in Livejournal, Myspace, Friendster, personal blogs, etc. And not all of them were for saying derogatory things about the company, some were for being associated with the wrong group, or being openly gay.

Facebook is just the most recent target; although asking for passwords is highly ususual.

Well, you've hit on why people think this is new right there; looking up publicly available information about staff is one thing, demanding access to their private accounts is a completely different kettle of fish.

It still blows my mind that companies in America genuinely think that they have a right to know, or indeed make judgments about what you do outside work time.

 

[crimresearch]

I can't believe people actually think this is something new. Asking for, or googling for, employees' social media sites is hardly unusual. It's been going on for the better part of a decade; and there have been several high-profile cases of employees being fired for things they've said or done in Livejournal, Myspace, Friendster, personal blogs, etc. And not all of them were for saying derogatory things about the company, some were for being associated with the wrong group, or being openly gay.

Facebook is just the most recent target; although asking for passwords is highly ususual. Normally they'd just ask for usernames so they could keep up on what their employees were doing and saying on their own time.

But even aside from this, it's hardly a new process. It's only relatively recently that employers have been prohibited from including morals clauses in employment contracts and policies.

That's why I make sure that I keep my online presence and my professional presence completely separate. There is nothing in any of my online sites aside from LinkedIn that could be easily traced back to me (doing so would require breaking a law or two).

Again, from the OP on out, this isn't about seeing a site, it is specifically about demanding passwords... especially demanding passwords from people who don't even work for them.

Do you know how many applicants per opening some mundane jobs get? No company has any business asking for this.