Hi,more and more people report on employers demanding Facebook passwords to check out potential employees. I'm wondering if this is actually happening, how the legal situation is, and how to best react. C

Meanwhile Low pay, delays over promotion and wage freezes made it very hard for the US government to attract and keep talented computer security staff, . Meh, I'll trust the market to best allocate funds and effort. Maybe keep me a large steel pitch fork as a hedge

i think that the fact that an adult male has FB account is on itself a reason not to hire him

QuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintHi,more and more people report on employers demanding Facebook passwords to check out potential employees. I'm wondering if this is actually happening, how the legal situation is, and how to best react. CI think it's just overblown in the media, I don't know anyone who's had this happen in the US and I'd expect it to be illegal in most European countries.QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehi think that the fact that an adult male has FB account is on itself a reason not to hire himThat's most likely an age difference based view. Facebook messages have almost replaced 99% of all e-mail contact with friends and family for me. Largely because pretty much everyone is on Facebook.

I think such a question is a good test of the quality of the candidate. If they have even the remote semblance of character and spine, they'll not betray the privacy of their friends and refuse giving you the password. Of course, what corporation wants to have people with character and spine working for them?

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehi think that the fact that an adult male has FB account is on itself a reason not to hire himHow old are you? 100? Most people under the age of 35 have one, and many over. In fact a lot of people use it for keeping in touch with relatives overseas, posting pictures of their babies, etc. Frankly, not having a FB account is more of a tell than having one.Asking for your password violates fb's terms of use, and poossibly (at least in the states) violates your free speech rights.

Asking for your facebook password is ridiculous and bizarre, I have never heard of it. I don't even believe it, actually. You must be confused, employers simply want to see the profile, and to demand the company is represented a certain way by the public image of employees.

"employers simply want to see the profile, and to demand the company is represented a certain way by the public image of employees. "If my employer wants my services as a PR rep, they have to pay me separately for that.

QuoteOriginally posted by: EscapeArtist999How old are you? 100? not even half of it. i talk to relatives. for photo exchange i use dropbox. they don't claim ownership of your content

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehi think that the fact that an adult male has FB account is on itself a reason not to hire himThis is pretentious nonsense. I have a FB account since FB exists in my country (yes, I'm a stupid hipster fuck) and I was in high school then. I don't upload photos of my cat and I don't generally post what I have for breakfast. It keeps me in touch with people I've met and often I barely know. I think it's actually a very neutral thing.

more and more people report on employers demanding Facebook passwords to check out potential employees. I'm wondering if this is actually happening, how the legal situation is, and how to best react. This is such a legal minefield that my Reassuringly Expensive Lawyers held a seminar to explain the depth of hole that the dimwit end of HR are digging for themselves and the new Careers channel on TheRegister.com will have a story by me about the whole clusterfuck rising up out of the darkness consuming money and careers as soon as I'm next drunk.For a start there are boobytraps in the form of discrimination...A problem for antisemites and homophobes is that it is often quite hard to tell and the smart end of banks and HFs impose contract terms on recruiters that we must not tell them about sex,age,faith,race perceived sexuality, disability and military service. (both the last two are real)The logic is that if they don't know that you're HIV+ it is hard to make a case that they discriminated against you, though obviously a bit less good if you wear a turban and/or a skirt.In the UK and USA there are specific (unintentional) legal incentives to claim bigotry in your claim for wrongful dismissal.British law puts a relatively modest cap on the amount you can claim for wrongful dismissal if it's just "wrong", but "evil dismissal" like racism has no limit on the cash you can get, US law in some areas adds penalties and of course there is punitive damages if the employer is evil rather than merely bad.Also big firms really hate getting sucked into bigotry cases, hence their efforts to keep their hands clean by not knowing things.But with access to FB etc they would spot that you're a member of the gay black blind jews with AIDS group and once they know it, it is very hard to un-know it.So they hire you, then fire you, is it because you're crap or because a manager hates your subset of humanity ?Then of course they now know not only your secrets but those of people who've shared with you, who may be a client, competitor or employee, or someone famous, (unlikely for one individual, nearly certain if you have 10,000 staff)These factlets are on their systems and whereas it is depressingly easy to accidentally lose data, it's tough to provably destroy it.Here's a shock for you: Not everything on the Internet is true, yes really.So if two people have a conversation about a 3rd party and say bad things, copies of that "information" are now on the bank's systems.It might not be worth suing a low level bank staffer but if you convey a libel you dig a hole possibly millions of bucks deep for an employer with deeper pockets.Then there's insider trading and blackmail, I'm told a large % of all illicit affairs start or are coordinated on FB, what fun can be had there.If you says to a friend "I like my boss, Bernie Madoff, but it's clear the firm is going to explode in a ball of flaming shit" real money can be made and if you as an officer of the bank learn that another regulated firm is doing something wrong then you have a strict duty to report it, or a duty to short them, you choose.You might say that your HR has greater personal integrity than that, I might agree with you, but background checking is outsourced to chimps like Resource Solutions, part of Robert Walters and I wouldn't trust them with knowing my shoe size let alone private conversations.That's a vital part of any security process, you might say "I trust this person" but if you grant access that widely then the set of potential troublemakers goes up hard, you might trust Deutsche Bank, but do you want the Robert Walters group having access ?Even if they don't do anything bad, what if something bad happens just after they got access ?honestly, I don't know, but it won't be pretty for the employer.Then under the Data Protection acts that exist everywhere in the whole world except the USA, there are restrictions on how long personal data can be held and to what purpose it may be used.This shit sucks up the whole working time of some people in IT and compliance, for instance recorded phone calls that have not been marked as evidence in a case must be deleted after 6 months (it's more complex than that).If the data leaks onto the PC of an HR person, it may persist for years, or get copied into an email, just waiting for the legal discovery process to find it and say "aha ! here's an email from HR to the manager that sacked you saying you were kicked out of the Turkish army for being gay !"(this really happens in Turkey which still has a slave army). Given how often managers ignore HR emails it's entirely possible he never read it or simply didn't care, but he fired this guy who now is making a legal fuss.Then as some banks have found out women, gays or whatever can get together and push a class action down their throat, since (for instance) a bank may read FB where you tell a friend that you're trying for a baby and by coincidence your next bouns is zero when everyone else gets 150%.On top of that, the laws about what data you may hold vary across countries and across time.We may even do this horror story as a live stage show...Yes I know my metaphor is of a hole, filled with landmines, possessed by an evil spirit and taking the inhuman form of Resource Solutions staff, that is how bad it is, trust me on that.

Thanks Dominic!!So bottom line: Only complete idiot firms will be stupid enough to peek into your Facebook, since by doing so they basically issue me a free, perpetual "pls sue me!" call with strike 0.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintSo bottom line: Only complete idiot firms will be stupid enough to peek into your Facebook, since by doing so they basically issue me a free, perpetual "pls sue me!" call with strike 0.My girlfriend is cheating on me. And I have good reason to believe it is Vikram Pandit!

QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerQuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintSo bottom line: Only complete idiot firms will be stupid enough to peek into your Facebook, since by doing so they basically issue me a free, perpetual "pls sue me!" call with strike 0.My girlfriend is cheating on me. And I have good reason to believe it is Vikram Pandit!would you like to talk about that?

QuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintwould you like to talk about that?Sure. My girlfriend started acting strange right about the time I gave my employer my facebook password. She was doing something suspicious, but I didn't know what, since it was like she knew when I would be getting off work early or late. Like somebody in the office was telling her. Next thing, I found in my browser cache a page that showed how much Vikram Pandit makes. And she asked me one day how much I make. So I think Vikram Pandit used my account to message her, and tell her how much I really make. Who outside the firm would know that? And she is seeing someone, and from what I can deduce about him, and what I know about Vikram Pandit, and my employer being the only one who has my facebook password other than me, the lightbulb just came on one day when I saw him leaving the office, and I knew it was him.