Next time I interview someone for a position at my company, I'm going to ask them for their Facebook password. If they give it to me, they will be automatically disqualified from the hiring process for lack of common sense.
I don't think this is much better. I wouldn't work for someone who asked me this question, even if this were the rationale. Who knows why someone would divulge their password. I bet there are reasons other than being completely devoid of common sense.
Regardless, I bet that any predictive relationship between willingness to divulge a Facebook password in an interview and the ability to perform adequately as a software engineer is weak at best. To me, an employer who doesn't understand that shows poor capacity for unbiased reasoning.
If I were interviewing a candidate and had decided to ask this question, my response following their reaction would be "Just kidding. We don't do that here" followed by taking note of how concerned they initially appeared at the question.
The "just kidding" would probably need to be before I answered. If I start to get up and walk out and then they say "no, I was just yankin' ya!" I'm going to be really suspicious.
What exactly do you think their level of visible concern would tell you about them? An employer conducting jokey personality tests would be a huge red flag for me.
Well, for one, this was kind of a sarcastic comment.
Second, if I really did this, once the interviewee refuses to give out the password I would congratulate them, saying they passed my test of modern technological common sense: "never EVER give out your password to anyone for any reason".
Oddly, I don't find this idea too offensive, especially since so many companies have large security holes via social engineering. If the applicants are this lackadaisical in keeping their own data private, why would I trust them with the company's or my customer's sensitive information?
With that said, I definitely understand why an applicant would be offended by the question. In fact, I would hope they are! I guess the second test is seeing if they understand the logic of such a question then convincing him or her that I don't conduct myself this way.
In the right hands, this is a great tool, but in the wrong hands, it is a disaster.
In my case it would still backfire. I wouldn't know what the response would be if I _had_ given them the password. It would make me think the person hiring me was being manipulative and dishonest. And that is a best-case scenario.
Secondly, it would be setting the bar way too low. I don't appreciate being congratulated for not being an idiot. Someone congratulating me and actually being impressed of that fact makes me think less of that person.
A pretty bad start to a supposedly long relationship, if you ask me.
In a similar vein, it's not clear to me why I should be deprived of the knowledge that a potential future employer is a privacy-invading jerk. The censor not only infringes on the rights of the speaker, but also the rights of the would-be listeners.
How does your logic apply if the don't have a Facebook account?
What if your prospective employee asked you to sign a NDA with regards to any personal information he may or may not reveal, before the interview started. How would you view them then?
Reason I ask is there be companies that will find away around law's and will ask you to sign a NDA during the interview stages and this is accepted in general. Does focus the aspect of what happens at work stays at work and what happens at home stays at home, somewhat.
Can NDA overrule the law? For example, can burglar who broke into your house force you to sign NDA so you don't report this case to the police? IANAL, but probably law doesn't work that way; burglary is still a crime regardless of NDAs, and asking for Facebook password at the interview is a violation of law too, no matter what any kind of contract says.
I don't understand how it could possibly be legal in the first place since it gives away information that they are not allowed to ask for, such as marital status and sexual orientation.
Wouldn't it be equivalent to divulging that and so much more?
IANAL, but it's actually not illegal to ask about marital status. It's just illegal to discriminate based on martial status and if you ever landed in court, you might have a tough time explaining why you asked that question if it didn't affect the hiring decision.
Likewise asking for social media password is pretty dangerous even if it's not specifically illegal because it opens you up to claims that you found something on the account that revealed some protected class status.
(And, sadly, Title VII, the federal anti-discrimination law, does not protect against sexual orientation. In many states it is perfectly legal to fire people for being gay. A bill to fix this situation has been stalled in Congress for nearly two decades.)
One obvious example would be if you had hired the interviewee in question. If so, it would be awfully difficult to demonstrate discrimination against them!
Don't get me wrong, it is a very bad idea to ask these questions. But it is not illegal, strictly speaking.
Well, I cannot take a lesbian applying for a job at a college run by Jesuits as an example of rampant sexual orientation discrimination.
Is it possible that the federal laws have had a normalising affect - the different states may have different laws but majority of companies simply go with federal law as they probably don't even know different.
I would be interested in state by state breakdowns of discrimination suits and see if they compare to each other or uk in any useful way. Google not helping here or my brain too dead.
This is definitely series. Sexual orientation and identity are not protected statuses in the United States (some states may have their own laws on the books for this), so being fired for that reason doesn't allow you to file a lawsuit for discrimination.
"As used in this chapter, “social media” means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations."
That's actually a little tricky when it comes to SaaS - if an employee set up the PagerDuty / S3 / Basecamp / what-have-you account under their own name it might be slightly awkward to take the account over should they leave the company.
Not a huge deal - with discipline, those services should be set up using a company-specific account - but it does suggest that SaaS services should make sure they provide a "transfer this to another user" feature.
I'm sure some lawyers will be happy to draft yet another section to your already long and incomprehensible employment contract to deal with this situation.
And even more happy to draw a lawsuit out for months when a disgruntled ex-employee refuses to hand over the password for such a service with reference to this law.
But, hey, there are several single pieces of anecdotal evidence, certainly it's irrelevant that it's election season, so all is good.
This whole situation with facebook passwords shows the difference between the states and Europe, imho. I have hard time imagining European companies asking for a facebook password. Whether it's legal or not.
Even in the worker-hating, employer-loving USA, it's relatively uncommon. As many have posted here on Hacker News, actually looking at an employee's social network account (other than, maybe, LinkedIn) can open up all kinds of liabilities for discrimination lawsuits.
So banning the practice really just serves to codify what anyone with common sense was working out in their head anyway.
UK: Yup, this sounds absolutely planet zog. People do get themselves into trouble through facebook, twitter and blogging (see below), but employers don't ask for passwords, that is for sure.
Actually, he was offered his job back, but didn't take it up. It's unclear if the offer was before or after he won an appeal against Waterstone's dismissal (it is not unusual to get an offer for reinstatement but still run the employment tribunal process to win compensation for the dismissal). But in the meantime he'd gotten an offer from Forbidden Planet to run their blog, and apparently reached a settlement with Waterstone's instead.
As far as I can tell, he still runs the Forbidden Planets blog (as well as his own at http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/ ).
It is almost certainly illegal in the European Union.
The EU Data Protection (i.e. privacy) law means that if you're collecting personal information (in any way, not just computer), then you have to:
(a) Explain why you are asking for it, and you have to give a legitimate reason why you want to know it. You cannot store information you cannot explain why you need it
(b) You then have to store the personal information in a secure manner. So you can just ask for access to someone's Facebook account and then share it around the office.
(c) The personal data requested must be proportionate to what you want to do. I doubt "tell us everything about your social life" is acceptable for just hiring a person for a job.
(there might be other reasons why this is against data protection law, but I can't think of any off the top of my head)
Not to mention the much stronger employee rights (e.g. you cannot not hire someone based on family status, sexuality, etc.), and it would be much harder to prove you didn't use that information if you accessed it. (Employee protection is stronger in EU, none of this "at will" crap)
As far as I know - and a quick google search confirms this - it is typical for a European resume/CV/job application to include the applicant's age, marital status, number of children, and even a photo (race/ethnicity).
(Not certain if your post implied that European companies are more privacy-minded, just wanted to point out that that's debatable).
There are no typical European CVs. Every country will have its own style.You won't see any pictures in the UK for example, but it's still not uncommon to see one in PL.
Photos are commonly attached to resumes in the following countries: Germany, Austria, Greece, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain. Date of birth or age: Italy, Germany, Austria, France Finland, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Czech Rep, Hungary, Romania, Greece. Similar for Eastern European countries, or for marital status and/or number of children, place of birth, etc. Does that cover enough Europe/personal information irrelevant to the candidate's ability to perform their job for you?
If anything, the UK CVs stand out among European CVs as being much more like the US resumes, i.e. less invasive. Back to the context of this thread, for the parent to point to Europe as a protector of privacy for the job seeker is disingenuous.
I'm disheartened bans like this even need to happen in the first place -- companies should really reconsider hiring anyone they'd feel like they have to ask this sort of stuff to in the first place (Conversely, any company that ask this sort of stuff of their teammates should be places you should avoid working for).
All it takes is one person to sue for discrimination because their profile says they're gay / disabled / pregnant / a veteran / etc, and the employer has no way of proving that wasn't the reason for passing them over.
This is the same reason smart employers will never ask you questions about those topics in an interview. It's too hard to defend accusations of discrimination if you happen to discover that the candidate is in a legally protected class.
Reminds me of this resignation letter.. apparently it's fictional, I remembered it being genuine, but the point it raises is valid I believe: http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-hereby-resign
Well, given what I was asked when a friend was getting a Federal clearance, I can imagine it would pop up in government. Although, to be fair to the interviewer and FBI, they were looking for stuff that was not public but could be used for blackmail.
One of the danger signs used to be debt held by people in the defense industry. Someone paying off the debts for some secrets was modus operandi.
It was for an entry-level baking position at a large grocery store/chain and they just requested her Facebook credentials so they could "do a background check".
Wouldn't it make more sense to just send a friend request to candidates 2-3 weeks ahead of the interview?
I mean, if you want to see facebook/timeline information - that's the simplest way (assuming they even have non-public profiles to start with). Twitter is pretty much open season.
A good step forward, however it would be better to have a generic data protection/privacy law, (like EU Data Protection Directive) that goes beyond just "employeers asking for social media passwords"
Just banned from doing it? That's way too mild. Those employer that were caught doing this should be fined and/or disbanded. If they think they have the right to ask for social media passwords what other rights do they think they have? This is a very severe breach of privacy by an employer.
They've passed more budgets and jobs bills than the Senate has. They've also had more votes on such things than the Senate. (And no, filibusters/cloture doesn't account for the difference.)
The Dem position was stated by Treasury Secretary Geitner - "No, we don't have a plan. We just know that we don't like yours."
That's not terribly ironic. Contrary to the indignant fanciful writings of tech blog writers, there's no evidence that this is any kind of a widespread practice. Why is anyone's guess, although practicality, exposure to existing laws and basic human decency might all be factors.
But no, let's get a few more redundant and/or downright pointless laws on the books, we're not spending anywhere near enough on lawyers yet.
The reason for why it is not a widespread practice is probably because you scare off way too many potential employees. I know I would consider ending the interview instantly if asked to hand over any passwords. And for sure I would not take any job there.
Scholarships and universities is where there might be a case for the law. I would like to see some real examples first though where current law does not already stops this for scholarships/universities.
I can't give any specific examples, however I do remember reading at some universities, the athletes have to give up their passwords/usernames for social media sites or they risk getting kicked off the team and losing their scholarships.
I'm flat against businesses asking for passwords, the very idea is so absurd I can't believe it exists.
That said, while workers have rights so do employers (this is not one of them) but being able to run your business without being unfairly accused of something seems to be what the reps where arguing against; specifically that what the dems proposed would have enabled the FCC to overreach their authority. Or are you like a big fan of the FCC having even more power?
When I first heard that employers were doing this; this demanding of social media passwords... I remember... I-- I-- I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet. Right through my forehead. And I thought... my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they... were stronger than we.
Seriously. This whole idea was the brink of draconian tyranny. When things like this started transpiring five and ten years ago, I immediately withdrew from ALL social media websites, and vowed never to abide by real identity demands on any social website that intended to publish it publicly.
I swore to myself that I would debate any rotten hiring goon into the ground, if I was ever asked such a question during an interview. Not that I would even want to stay on at such a work place, but just to see if they were smart enough to tolerate my brand of dissent. If inflexible, I would instantly walk out, and threaten (an empty threat) to sue.
It's not just about the invasion of privacy an and employers pervasive, stifling surveillance of subordinates. What integrity is there to a Facebook account? Nothing more than an e-mail address is required to create one. E-mail addresses are free and plentiful. More e-mail addresses could potentially be created than addresses in the entire IPv6 number space, and by corollary, so too with social media accounts.
What recourse is there for me to prevent malicious individuals from continually creating fake accounts in my name? Do I have endlessly deep pockets and the spare time it takes to chase down trolls, sue for libel and slander? But how many people have the time to spam and flood the internet with anything they want? What's to stop even me for creating 10,000 fake accounts in my own name? And in doing so, would I forfeit my chances at certain jobs? What absolute twaddle.
