Companies Ask for Potential Employees To Hand Over Their Pass Words to Facebook Accounts … Senators Ask Feds to Investigate

Employers cross the line of personal privacy by asking job applicants for Facebook passwords.

Finally an issue that the RIGHT, LEFT and MIDDLE can all agree on with the ACLU. Your password to your FACEBOOK or anything else that is yours personally is none of your bosses business.  What party about invasion of privacy do these companies not understand? How about the fact that your very request goes against Facebook’s TOS, terms of service, of sharing passwords.

Good grief, why don’t they just ask for your email and cell phone password as well? While you are at it, ask for their teen diary. What’s next, your bank account, utility and Internet account passwords?  Being required to “friend” the business would be bad enough, especially since many have their security settings so that only family and friends can see what is on their page, but a password? Who finds this completely hypocritical seeing that every company has COMPLIANCE departments that set policies and procedures, one of them that it is an immediate “termination” offense to share passwords?

This is nothing more than a back door effort to be privy to information that employers are not allowed to ask in an interview.  But now US Senators are asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether employers are violating federal law by asking for the passwords of prospective job applicants by asking for their Facebook passwords.

Two U.S. senators are asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether employers asking for Facebook passwords during job interviews are violating federal law, their offices announced Sunday.

Troubled by reports of the practice, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said they are calling on the Department of Justice and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to launch investigations. The senators are sending letters to the heads of the agencies.

Of course employers have a right to screen their employees and a simple Google search could remedy the need. However, to hand over a password, specially when it breaks the TOS of the very service seems a bit extreme. There is a reason why law enforcement needs to provide a subpoena or other form of legal request for IP addresses from service providers and even us bloggers when investigating a crime.

Hands off FACEBOOK … the very information that employers would be privy to in your profile, is the very information that employers are not allowed to ask during an interview, age, marital status, sexual orientation and for women, if you are pregnant. STOP BEING LAZY AND DO THE BACKGROUND CHECK YOURSELF WITHOUT VIOLATING INDIVIDUAL’S PRIVACY.

How long will it be before we see a rash of lawsuits based on the premise that employees were rejected job hiring because of not providing their Facebook passwords.