Would you give up your social network passwords for a job?

It used to be quite the saying in the employment circles "It's not what you know, it's WHO you know." Social networking has taken our lives to a whole new level..but how far and at what cost/ risk?
If an employer asked you to hand over a list of sites you frequent, and your passwords to get a job..or KEEP your job..would you do it?

Last June, the city of Bozeman, Mont., became notorious when it implemented a policy that required anyone applying to a city job to hand over logins and passwords for any social networking sites they used. We're not just talking about Facebook and MySpace, either. They wanted access to chat rooms and forums frequented by applicants. After people made a fuss about the invasive policy, Bozeman officials backed down and decided to adjust their application requirements.

Yes, the company backed off. But this could be just the beginning. Employers already use Facebook profiles to judge potential applicants...
What if your entire net habits became part of your resume'?

Employers have been looking at job seekers' online personas for years now. A simple query in a search engine can reveal plenty of information about you. Go to any networking site and type in your e-mail address or name and see what information is available to the public, because employers are already doing that. But if you let someone log in to your account, your privacy settings won't matter. It will all be on display. But should you be panicking just yet?

FULL ARTICLE:
tiny.cc...

That is definetly crossing the line of privacy HARDCORE!

Passwords are personal, this worlds going haywire with peoples things what and whatnot to do.. regulate this and that, keep tabs on this..

latest "oppression" against me (this is just a minor thing but still..)
sitting in a train in a cabin for max people 30, there were currently sitting
only a few plus my 2 friends we listened music from a cellphone and the train staff demanded to shut it... it really wasnt so loud or offensive.. point being wth

this going bit far fetched for the topic but wheres the democracy?

I can see how employers might be worried that there might be a lot of "dirt" on an employee online, but employers should not have access to passwords. Congress should pass some sort of legislation protecting people.

If an employer cannot find dirt on a prospective employee using readily available tools like google, then it is likely nobody else is going to find the dirt and the employer does not have to worry about its reputation or business being harmed by dirt.

Rather than give up passwords, simply tell them that you don't frequent any websites....and make sure you don't browse the web on the company computer/server.

P.S. tell the potential employer that giving your passwords would be unethical, in much the same way that it would be if you freely handed out your company passwords...

[edit on 25-5-2010 by Aggie Man]

Passwords, no. List of site frequented, no again. I have the good fortune of if people want to google my actual name they are met with a different guy of the same name that hs made a career out of writing survival manuals.

In fact even with some details such as an email address doesn't help much. Using Ahabstar brings up hit here on ATS and lots of references to a deep sea fishing reel and Star Trek: First Contact (because of Piccard's Captain Ahab speech).

My facebook/myspace pages will crop up. Both are rather innocuous with mostly people I went to high school with (had a reunion last year). Needless to say, no leading the glamourous life, no driving down to 55 Secret St.

Originally posted by Aggie Man
Rather than give up passwords, simply tell them that you don't frequent any websites....and make sure you don't browse the web on the company computer/server.

P.S. tell the potential employer that giving your passwords would be unethical, in much the same way that it would be if you freely handed out your company passwords...

[edit on 25-5-2010 by Aggie Man]

I agree with you there..however if your employer DID do some dirt digging and found something you felt was fine to post on a social network site, but not fine for your boss to see..what if anything could be the outcome of that?
Could an employer potentially FIRE or not hire someone based on something they found on the internet?
Any records of previous court cases that anyone knows of?

Its like 10x worse if you have to undergo a life style full scope TS/SCI clearance, they will ask you questions that would make veteran porn stars blush or turn green. That being said thats why I don't hold a TS because I know what kinds of questions and research they do, and its far more invasive than someone asking you to give up a few passwords to some farmville invites.

reply to post by AccessDenied


It is fair for an employer to fire or not hire somebody for something someone posts online that is likely to harm the employer or its reputation, even if a person posts something on his or her own time.

I just object to the advanced dirt digging tools. Dirt is not likely to hurt an employer if an employer needs access to passwords, online aliases, etc. to get to it. Perhaps I could find out "AccessDenied" is up to all sorts of stuff by reading ATS, but I might not necessarily be able to line "AccessDenied" with the real person behind "AccessDenied" and his/her employer without a little help.

This is becoming more and more popular - I've known employers (whom friends work for) that have required lists of social sites that they belong to as well as user names... (not passwords, though) and they are required to keep that list updated.

I can see this going two ways...

(1) If you keep up to date with professional sites, that's a positive. Shows you are current and relevant and professionally in demand. (2) However, personal use social sites have obviously been know to get people in a lot of trouble at work, some fired. So moral is be very careful what you put online or allow others to put online, about you.

Personally, I have no problem providing a list of professional sites. Nothing more.

AD-

Could an employer potentially FIRE or not hire someone based on something they found on the internet?

YES if (in the US) one lives in an at-will employment state (don't know about Canada) an employer can not hire or fire an employee for any reason or no reason, at any time.


[edit on 25-5-2010 by LadySkadi]

Well first I'd have to get hired.
Beyond that I would say my first instinct would be heck no, but then again right now at the point I am in I'd stand on my freaking head to keep a job!

Absolutely not, never, ever, ever. I go to work, I do my job well and I make more money for the company than it costs to employ me. If that changes they can sack me but what I do in my personal life is mine and they can go jump if they think they're going to get any input into it.

To be honest, I'ld rather stave than sell myself into that level of slavery.

This topic is one of many reasons why I have deleted my Facebook account. Not only is it a matter of employers increasingly wanting access to this information, but over the last couple of years there have been several cases of employers gaining access somehow without the persons consent.

Remember: Facebook is a for-profit organization, if there is money to be made secretly supplying information to anyone who wants to pay for it then they will jump on the oppertunity. Add to that the exceptionally vague explanation given concerning your consent when adding an App and there is no reason to believe that this isn't part of the business model and that you have agreed to it.

What started me thinking about it was adding a stupid daily fact app, I had to agree to allow the developer access to everything on my account just to get a 'Today in History' message? Shortly afterwards I went to work and had a fellow employee I didn't really know talk to me about the pictures that had been posted from a party that weekend.

End of Facebook for me.

As mentioned here by others, Google your name, if you don't get much use quotations too. Luckily for me the only thing for me specifically are a couple posts on an engineering news server blog from when I was in university. Other than that I don't have much of a 'net presence accept for a couple professional sites that are a boon to my keeping up on advances in my industry .

Paranoia is something everyone must deal with themselves; what is too much for you? The fact many don't realise is that with Twitter, Facebook and a Smartphone (they have GPS) a person's every move and action can be monitored without ever even breaking a law.

No thanks.


[edit on 25-5-2010 by [davinci]]

reply to post by [davinci]


Some employers are not just looking for dirt online, but they would also like to see good stuff. You might be better off having a "clean" facebook page with pictures of you volunteering at a church and waving the American flag than having no online profile at all.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Valid point, but if they want to know, they can ask. Also, all of my volunteer work is listed on my resume.

Look at it this way, would you give your boss the keys to your house so they can snoop around when you're out?

Privacy is too often confused with having something to hide, nothing could be farther from the truth.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


I agree. Better to give them something that you control (i.e. professional or association site, etc.) rather than giving them nothing and risk them going digging... I would suspect that most employers would have difficulty believing someone has zero online presence in this day/age and depending on the career field... zero online presence would be detrimental to one's career (in some cases)... Imagine, you are a high tech engineer or a CPA or a doctor or in Real Estate or whatever and you claim not to have a webpage or a LinkedIn account or a membership to the profession's governing body or association? That would be questionable and would likely spur more digging, or flat rejection.



[edit on 25-5-2010 by LadySkadi]

Originally posted by LadySkadi
Imagine, you are a high tech engineer or a CPA or a doctor/lawyer/whatever and you claim not to have a webpage or a LinkedIn account or a membership to the professions governing body? That would be questionable and would likely spur more digging, or flat rejection.

That stuff is going to be resume stuff, we're talking about your social networking type stuff, there's a swing of a difference. Essentially, if you were to say "I don't have a facebook page so there is no passwords to give" but were later found to have a facebook page, you're in breach of contract.

If everyone told employers where to shove this stuff then there wouldn't be an issue, people need to grow a back bone.

reply to post by pieman


I am also talking about professional social sites (LinkedIn as an example) or Facebook, if used professionally.

Not trying to change anyone's mind about their choices, just putting it out there that it is and will be a consideration on the job front and will continue to increasingly be something one is confronted with, in the future.

I'm suggesting to anticipate this and make it work for you. Nothing more.

reply to post by LadySkadi


What a sad statement of our world.

I'm not arguing with you at all, but what is our society becoming that it is considered abnormal not to plaster yourself across the web? I truely fear for the coming generations if we continue down this path without making a few demands of our own.

It is inevitable that some things will come to pass, but how they are allowed to manifest cannot solely be at the discretion of business and government. I work in the computer field and quite frankly it is disturbing where we are headed.

I agree with you about having some presence, I am lucky that given my age I am not expected to be wired into everything. I can easily get away with only a few memberships to sites that relate to my job either through knowledge or contacts.

The bottom line really becomes if you don't want the world to know about it don't ever post it online ever under any circumstances, because once you hit that submit button there is no undo. Give me enough time and those posts you make 5 years ago which were deleted a half hour later can be found, the internet is freakish like that.

There is a sort of back-handed benefit to all this loss of privacy; it might just encourage people to start thinking before they post those pictures or send that tweet or wall post update. Its gotten a lot harder to separate your real life from your online persona these days and its only going to get worse as time goes on. As technology like facial recognition and geo-tagging expands its getting easier for the average computer geek to cross reference images and text data to develop a scary level of information on someone and their life.

if a employer asked me for that information i would beat him up right in the office on the spot i would be the last person he ever asked that question to

they have absolutely no right to even think they could ask for that information

reminds me of that movie from the seventies take this job and shove it