10 ms·

Colleges and Employers Demanding Facebook Passwords

246 points by aspir 15y ago

dmils4 15y ago
This is unbelievable. With all of these studies showing up that employers/schools use public social media channels to make a decision on applicants, this is way over the top. Hopefully this ends fast.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  It is worse than that -- say you are friends with some former coworkers on facebook (because well, you actually like them) and they then show some other company their facebook page while interviewing there. They might or might not hire them, but even if they do, they have seen private stuff that you might cause them to not hire you.
  - maxerickson 15y ago
    Your 'friend' could gossip about you without even using a computer.
16s 15y ago
What about those of us who have no Facebook account?
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Well you won't be friend-ed by me. But you can always create a phony one.
- perucoder 15y ago
  It will probably get to a point where employers think you are lying because "everyone" has a facebook account.
  - martingordon 15y ago
    Yup. Pretty soon a Facebook account (with a semblance of some activity) will be required to get a job.
    - kamjam 15y ago
      Yup, just like every developer must have Twitter, GitHub, an open suorce code repo, StackOverflow profile, professional blog, tumblr account etc etc. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669568 Personally, I like to have a real life off the computer sometimes.
      - devs1010 15y ago
        I hope you realize that you are exaggerating. Out of all of those, the only one that an employer has ever had any interest in was my GitHub account and I have gotten software dev jobs before I even had one
        perucoder 15y ago
        Thats not true. I've had several employers tell me that not having a LinkedIn account was amateurish.
        kamjam 15y ago
        Of course i'm exaggerating, I've worked in software for 10 years and never had any of those. Until about 3 months ago I didn't have a twitter account. I've never been out of work. BUT, the amount of people that look at me funny because I didn't, and the article that i linked to just reinforces that.
- loungin 15y ago
  I'd consider that a plus. (No account here either)
- astrodust 15y ago
  I can't wait for a service to pop up where for $500 they will make you an amazing, sterling Facebook account you can "share" with people. It will be populated with believable postings from other people you know, yet all of these other people will be cardboard cut-outs.
  - WiseWeasel 15y ago
    My cousin and I came up with a similar idea; we called it Fakebook, and then promptly went on to forget about it. There's gold in them there hills, though!
  - AkThhhpppt 15y ago
    Sounds familiar: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  We are to be burned at the stake for social crimes.
tomjen3 15y ago
Great, now I have to go unfriend everybody who might be willing to hand over their access since they would otherwise allow others to see what I have written.
funkah 15y ago
I've noticed a lot of people on Facebook who use nicknames or "first name plus some other word" instead of their real names. I imagine this is intended to keep anyone from searching their real name with Google or Facebook and finding that profile. But it's a short step from that, to having two or more Facebook accounts, one to be the person's "public face" and the rest for the actual things people do on Facebook.
X-Istence 15y ago
I would laugh in their faces so hard, and just turn around and walk away. I am neither handing over, nor logging in for my bosses to see. I've had a post that I accidentally made public on my Facebook come back to bite me in the ass, and it won't happen ever again.
- dmils4 15y ago
  For college athletes sometimes that option isn't there. If you've only got one school interested in you, and they're requiring you to provide it - calling their bluff is a risky move (on the other hand, might be worth pursuing a career in something other than sports if you're only talking to one school).
  - kamjam 15y ago
    So just create a 2nd "fake" account with seemingly "real" data and show them that. Or tell them you don't actually have a facebook account. It is possible to set the security so that people are unable to find/search for you. Anyway, I presume this is a US thing, this would never happen in the EU, it would go to the european court of human rights (or some court or other) so fast you won't even have time to apply lube!
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      > So just create a 2nd "fake" account with seemingly "real" data and show them that. I imagine that with the username/password, they'd notice that it was created two weeks ago, and that your friend network is all bots.
      - kamjam 15y ago
        The article says they are longer requesting username/password and instead looking over the shoulder. Why not add in some of your real friends? I said nothing about bots. Tell them why you need this. Change the name of your real account to something else. Hide it. Disable it. I think also that the new facebook timeline allows you to place "stories" and "events" to any point of time in the past. Or start deleting what you want hidden from your facebook account and then hand over the details. Or, how about some foresight. I don't know, how about I create a second account and keep that running side by side right now, because I'm in one of those industries that are douches about this kind of thing. I know some people that do this to keep stuff hidden from family members. Man, I have to think of everything round here... :) Everything I've just said I think is extremely wrong and if an employer asked me for these then I'd tell them to go fk themselves.
aspir 15y ago
I was a college athlete back in the day, and my athletic department tried to do something similar -- they would make shell accounts controlled by athletics/ncaa compliance and try to friend whole teams. We got around it by having a shared block list of the shells. If I recall correctly, we had 20 at a given time. But, our team was small (30 people), and not in the "money sports" (football, basketball, baseball), so we could get away with this. Larger teams in higher profile sports won't be able to do this.
epochwolf 15y ago
You have to be kidding me. This kind of violation of privacy is unconscionable.
SMrF 15y ago
And then the article requires a Facebook account to comment. "Hey look, we're quickly aggregating all of our personal data into one centralized place creating an obviously appealing target for authority as evidenced by this recent trend of college sports programs invading the privacy of students. Let's all talk about it on Facebook."
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  Yes, this is one of the worst trends right now. It's one of the primary reasons I killed my Facebook account and null routed all Facebook on my home network. Any site that requires Facebook as a login or comment function is dead to me.
  - RexRollman 15y ago
    I feel the same way, which makes me lucky that I opened a Spotify account when I did.
  - samstave 15y ago
    Its the reason I boycott techcrunch articles (aside from the lack of any editing).
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  I need a job more than I need to comment on a news article, though.
mcos 15y ago
Who's to know whether or not Facebook is considering plans to monetize this sort of behaviour by offerring institutions you have listed on your profile the opportunity to see everything you have listed for a fee.
- didgeoridoo 15y ago
  Considering that if this practice were revealed, it would cause a total collapse in Facebook's user base and thus its revenue engine... unlikely, to say the least.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Most people don't care about privacy violations. That's especially true of the Facebook userbase, because if they did care they would not be Facebook users. Seriously, most people will say things like "I don't have anything to hide so it doesn't bother me".
    - jonnathanson 15y ago
      I don't know if it's apathy, so much as it's lack of awareness. People are simply ignorant of how the things they say and post on Facebook can come back to haunt them, and when, and with whom, and in which settings. It's a safe bet to assume that most Facebook users simply don't know how Facebook data works, or what its ramifications could be. They won't know, or care, until they run into a specific case where it affects them -- at which point, chances are, it will have taken them entirely by surprise. (It takes only one off-handed reference to a drunken Facebook photo in a job interview, for instance, to put the fear of God into many users). I'm not suggesting that people would abandon Facebook en masse if they were better informed about it. And hell, I'm not sure many people even would care all that much. But I bet you'd see a marked shift in user behavior in pretty much any users in college or older. (Basically, anyone thinking about employment).
    - smacktoward 15y ago
      The only reason they don't care is because not caring hasn't gotten them burned yet. Sometimes people have to learn things the hard way...
lukeschlather 15y ago
>Shear has gotten the attention of Maryland state legislators, who have proposed two separate bills aimed at banning social media access by schools and potential employers. Why is this specifically targeted at social media? No one should request copies of people's private keys as part of any routine interview process. This is no different from asking for a copy of someone's PO box key, and the law should also clearly say that that is illegal (if it isn't already?)
- akdetrick 15y ago
  I'm no less disturbed by this than anyone else, but you do not truly own your Facebook account in the way that you would own a PO box. Your data belongs to Facebook, not to you. Sad, but true. Edit: (submitted too soon) I'm sure there's something legally dubious about requesting private keys in this way, but the PO box example was a clear reminder to me about how we wrongly think of our data on private services as "ours".
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    Really, I think I'm being charitable towards the schools with my interpretation. If we look at it from the "Facebook owns your data" perspective, then you have no right to give them your keys even if you honestly want to, because that's against Facebook's TOS and the employer/school could be charged with felony unauthorized use of computing resources, aka hacking. Really, I'm probably trying to hard. This is phishing, plain and simple, and should be treated as such.
  - superuser2 15y ago
    Facebook's "ownership" of your data is no different from that of Yahoo! Mail, GMail, cell phone companies, landline phone companies, the postal service, Western Union, and all the other organizations people been sending messages through for hundreds of years. (Skype being P2P and encrypted might make it an exception...) Facebook has no more or less access to/ownership of your life than your ISP and cell phone company.
raganwald 15y ago
Here’s what I said the last time around: First, I consider this the equivalent of asking to record conversations I have with my friends. If you as an employer think that it’s part of your business to eavesdrop on my friendships and romances, then we know where we stand and I will be over here working with someone else. Second, I can’t give you my FB credentials even if I wanted to. The reason is that by doing so, I am violating the privacy expectations of other people, who do not expect that the things they share with me in private messages or on their wall or photos will be shared with my employer. I have a similar arrangement with the person I date. She is welcome to ask me about my FB and email, however she is not allowed to rifle through it at will because other people may have an expectation of privacy in things they have emailed me.
- gxs 15y ago
  This may work for you now, and I stand my ground the same way, the reason this is so alarming is because eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you simply won't have a choice. I am curious, however, what will happen to people who really don't have a facebook. I've never had an account, would they believe me or assume I deleted it?
  - AlexandrB 15y ago
    > This may work for you now, and I stand my ground the same way, the reason this is so alarming is because eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you simply won't have a choice. At that point I delete my Facebook account and never look back.
    - stavrianos 15y ago
      This is the correct solution.
    - bilbo0s 15y ago
      It's never gone though... As soon as you apply for a job that is high level or sensitive enough, that information will be part of the dossier they review. Depending what is in your FB, or any other comment history you may have, it MIGHT be wise to keep that FB. Lest they think you were trying to hide something.
joelrunyon 15y ago
If you're going in for an interview and now this is a requirement, why don't you just deactivate your account and tell them that. Then, if you get the job (although I don't think I'd want to work at a place that's looking over my shoulder constantly), you can reactivate it whenever you want.
ttt_ 15y ago
Social media is becoming the main agent of a police state in a frightenly quick pace. I'm starting to think that the only reason these practices were not so common before was because of a technical barrier, and not because our rights were once valued. Putting bugs in your phone and residence is difficult, requires technical expertise and people to actually monitor. So well, what can you do? Like the article says, the option was to educate. But then comes social media and kills the technical barrier, so great, lets spy on our students, candidates, etc, and have them give us clearence to do so through intimidation. We never had those rights to begin with, spying was just more of a hassle then than it is now. Now begins the real fight for those rights. If we fail, then we are left with a socialitariam-regime and forced to keep using some hypocritical-media in order to be able to get jobs/loans/etc while we keep private matters offline (until new technology breaks that barrier too).
- yuhong 15y ago
  IMO the solution is to fix the root social/cultural causes. Get rid of the illusion that people are perfect, for example.
  - ericb 15y ago
    This won't work in practice. Any situation with many equally qualified people competing for a very small number of spots becomes what amounts to a beauty pageant. What I mean by "beauty pageant" is that since every candidate is so well-qualified, any superficial imperfection begins to be treated as a useful criteria for selection. When all worthwhile criteria are equal, worthless criteria are used to decide. "This guy swore in a facebook post, so lets go with the other guy."
    - yuhong 15y ago
      Yea I know, one of the reasons anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally flawed. Fixing the root social/cultural causes is a better idea.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Right, re-engineering human nature from the ground up is clearly much easier.
carbocation 15y ago
> All this scrutiny is too much for Bradley Shear, a Washington D.C.-lawyer who says both schools and employers are violating the First Amendment with demands for access to otherwise private social media content. > "I can't believe some people think it's OK to do this,” he said. “Maybe it's OK if you live in a totalitarian regime, but we still have a Constitution to protect us. It's not a far leap from reading people's Facebook posts to reading their email. ... As a society, where are we going to draw the line?" Surely they are misquoting this lawyer, or did the First Amendment start applying to corporations all of a sudden?
- evan_ 15y ago
  That's where I stopped reading. Maybe he's thinking about state funded schools, or applying for government jobs? It still doesn't make a lot of sense.
- orbd 15y ago
  Considering he is referencing the Maryland Dept of Corrections and the University of Virginia, a public institution, I'd say the 1st Amendment applies. UNC is also a public university and is mentioned prominently.
modeless 15y ago
Any employer who does this would leave themselves wide open to lawsuits based on anti-discrimination laws, as there's no way you can troll someone's private Facebook profile without learning protected information such as age, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.
orbitingpluto 15y ago
Meanwhile I am trying to read the article and having problems doing so because ghostery keeps on popping up notifications of adblocking. I might aquiesce to a FB access request as long as I was also given access to all emails, phone calls, SIN numbers, banking information and sexual habits of the Deans or CEO of the institution. That seems fair, considering I never use FB.
billpg 15y ago
"Sure. My password is =rk#C0|q7_Mf@zrtf'XnM/'2C3ZTJ1[*/>)1Wk(sr&+z0pEG/}jmN_3[jI:jp( I'll write it down for you on a piece of paper." "Yes, that's really my password. High security. Don't you have a secure password like that? You really should you know." "It didn't work? Are you sure you typed it in correctly? Try it again."
- TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
  Personally, I'd write my password in an obscure Unicode-supported script that is unavailable in most fonts.
  - pjscott 15y ago
    Be sure you go outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. A lot of software runs into weird bugs when you use characters that can't be represented in 16 bits in UTF-16. Bonus points if it uses bidirectional control characters.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      You might as well add a few 'drop table;'s in there, just in case. That way, if/when your potential employers accidentally wipe the databases at Facebook (or wherever they happen to be invading your privacy), they'll have two lawsuits on their hands! (The first being the one you file for an invasion of privacy, of course).
bilbo0s 15y ago
I'm just going to repost a comment I made during an HN thread on trolling here: "....However, on a general note, I think it is important to realize that every text message you send, every cell phone conversation you have, every post to the CNN forum you make, every tweet you send ... is directly attributable to your IP whether you use your own name or not. With Facebook and Google tracking everything you do, whether you are logged in or not, I would go one step further, and say all of these things are directly attributable to you personally. I would strongly urge young people to really think about what they are putting out there. Consider this, the military was doing the equivalent of credit checks for sensitive positions during the 60s. Now you need a credit check to do ANYTHING, even things that don't require credit. How long before an internet and phone background check is standard in the background checks organizations do before offering jobs? I can tell you the military is doing this sort of screening right now for sensitive positions, but at least you are confronted about it. It still basically ends your career, but they will give you a chance to explain your posts. In the private sector in the future, they will just deep six your application and you won't know what happened. Or they'll let you in at entry level, maybe, and subsequently you'll start running up against an invisible barrier as you try to advance beyond the first or second layer of management. Or you will find resistance to you advancing into management at all. Also be mindful, it can affect more than your professional life. Think about what the background checks for apartments will look like in the 2020s. Or what 'dating sites' will be like in the 2020s. Please consider your future before you make comments on ... say ... black people and Hurricane Katrina ... that might be misconstrued. Or post an opinion on ... say ... American soldiers in Afghanistan ... that could be taken out of context and viewed in a negative light. All that said, the absolute best defense against these sorts of situations is just not to be a douche, which isn't very hard..." ---- I think that comment is apropos here as well. I encourage all of the young people I work with, as often as I can, to be careful about what comments they put ANYWHERE on the internet. To be mindful of what they say during ANY cell phone conversation. And to try to limit their use of text messaging. I know this sucks, but this stuff is serious...these things WILL affect your future.
- kruhft 15y ago
  Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.
achompas 15y ago
For those who don't click through, the article's title is supremely misleading. There are only anecdotes about corrections departments and college athletics. But hoooooly crap this little gem: Social media monitoring on colleges, while spreading quickly among athletic departments, seems to be limited to athletes at the moment. There's nothing stopping schools from applying the same policies to other students, however. Look, college athletics has a lot of issues. Colleges secure all economic benefits associated with player performance in exchange for a college scholarship (I hope O'Bannon v. NCAA solves that problem soon). [0] But how can anyone extrapolate requirements from college athletes to the entire student body? Would any Ivy School dream of asking an applicant for their password, when said applicant's mother might be a partner at a law firm? What about the constitutional issues regarding the same request from a public university (funded by taxpayer money)? [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/?single_page=true http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-sham...
gcb 15y ago
Really are we discussing msn articles now? But to give perspective here: this is for college athletes. Nothing new. Those people, usually, agree to several freedom limitations, such as ridicule curfews and sex life control before games and such. I doubt one more freedom limitation is any concern. About the fears of it leaking to other jobs, well they are doing that for decades and you still have to hear your manager saying the curfew today will be 3pm cuz he do not want you making sex before the launch tomorrow.
- dacilselig 15y ago
  I understand that msn articles can contain sensationalism and may not contain the most accurate facts, however let's not make a hasty generalization. Freedom limitations such a curfew and sex life control, are by design there to limit the person's physical behavior, where being forced to provide your password to your social media account, an area where you feel that you can speak freely as a person, has nothing to do with trying to increase one's physical performance. To me, this just seem's to be a way to protect their institution. For example, It get's leaked that their QB believes in the Communism movement, which could reflect poorly on the school. This goes against progress as we are judging athletes based on their believes and not their athletic abilities. I find that the issue is more complicated than it just being something athletes should adapt to since they agree to give up certain freedoms when they join a team.
joezydeco 15y ago
I wonder if I could, in return, ask for a company's accounts payable queue and bank balance. I mean, how do I know that this company is trustworthy? Are they paying their bills on time? Is there cash in the bank?
CPops 15y ago
* It goes without saying that a request for access to personal data like this is something that nobody should ever comply with. * Asking somebody for access to their email/social network account is actually a great question to ask in a job interview. If somebody is so careless about their private data to easily give away access to it upon request, that would easily disqualify them in my book.
Lukeas14 15y ago
So glad I work in an industry where I'm comfortable saying no if asked for my Facebook login, knowing I can then go talk to the next company down the street. I can't imagine being in the position where my college scholarship or only job opportunity I may have for 3 months is at risk unless I provide my superiors with access to my most private conversations.
fragsworth 15y ago
As a Facebook game developer, all of our employees are friends with everyone in the company. We wouldn't require any of our employees to do this but so far none have complained. I think, however, that someone who didn't friend us would somehow be alienated from the rest of the company. I don't know how a situation like that should be properly handled.
- dinkumthinkum 15y ago
  This is your reaction to this? Really? I wouldn't comment except that you say you're a Facebook game developer; it's like being a part of the problem. If anything, I would think the FB dev community and FB itself should make statements stating that they publicly disagree with how organizations are using their services to abuse their users and that is highly unethical. I prefer that to tacit acceptance, personally.
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  As a Facebook game developer, all of our employees are friends with everyone in the company -------------------- And this is why Facebook is going to crap ... the idea that you can just friend anybody is why myspace quickly became a ghetto and facebook will eventually go down that road too.
lmarinho 15y ago
Is there a running list of companies/colleges that engage in this kind of practice? I'd like to know to keep my distance from them. Since they are so keen on invading other peoples privacies I gather they wouldn't mind being exposed on this issue.
mindcrime 15y ago
The next (which would be the first) employer who asks me for information of that nature will be politely asked to perform a variety of degrading sexual acts with themselves, various farm animals, and several types of construction equipment and power tools. When I get done laughing, I'll happily write down my 'password' for them: if they have any shame, they'll be beet red when they get done reading it. OK, I probably won't get the job, but that's OK since it's clearly somewhere I wouldn't actually have wanted to work anyway. Seriously, this whole notion is so asinine that it's almost beyond belief. I mean, why not just ask me for a copy of the key to my PO box, a copy of my car key, permission to tap my phone, and access to put a camera in my living room? Get real, people...
dinkumthinkum 15y ago
This doesn't make any sense. What if I don't have any social media, in fact, how do you even know that I do and that it that account searched, is, in fact, me. Why don't you also ask me to surrender my cell phone and dig through all my text messages; why not read my email and look in my bathroom as well?
smacktoward 15y ago
"Before we hire you, we'd like you to make a copy of your house keys for us. You know, so we can check in occasionally and make sure you're not doing anything that would make The Company look bad..."
Chrono 15y ago
Insanity. I would never in my life willingly give up any of my passwords, to anyone. Especially not something that contains so much private information as Facebook. Sure, Facebook themselves may share some of that information, or all if asked by a court but generally speaking it is somewhat safe. Want my Facebook password? No thank you, I will go somewhere else.
vibrunazo 15y ago
This gives me an idea of how to understand a developer's integrity and views on privacy before hiring. Ask them if they're ok with giving you their facebook account. But don't really ask for it. If they ask "so should I write down my password". You just say "I don't really want your account, just wanted to know if you were ok with it".
- rfrey 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment Only illegal if you're a law enforcement officer in most developed countries. But unethical even if you're not.
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    What? It's not a request to commit a crime, it's a check of the strength of their belief in privacy. There's nothing wrong with the action you're asking them to do.
dangoldin 15y ago
If only no one actually succumbed to the demands. Then the colleges and employers would have no choice but to reverse the decision. Unfortunately, those who agree to this will coerce others to do the same. Talk about a perverse network effect.
horsehead 15y ago
I really enjoy seeing these social media articles. I got in trouble with my employer for a post on a friends social media page that my employer found out about (a coworker was trying to get me fired, it turns out) and threatened me with firing. The post was unrelated to work, but they deemed it as reflecting poorly on the company. learn the hard way I suppose? in any case, I still feel that social media sites are plagued by abuse by third parties.
brador 15y ago
I love how, even without a constitution, things like this would never fly in Europe, yet here in the US, WITH a constitution, we get these events taking place. It's almost like the existence of the constitution encourages challenges to privacy. The "if you had a defense but didn't use it then you must be okay with what's happening" thinking.
- eCa 15y ago
  Which European country does not have a constitution?
  - brador 15y ago
    England doesn't have a constitution as far as I know.
    - eCa 15y ago
      Interesting. I got some reading to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King... "No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea."
- keithpeter 15y ago
  In UK we have the Criminal Records Bureau who provide a full record check for people in certain occupations (working with children, prison/police/uniformed services &c) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/crb/ http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/crb/ I have three current CRB 'disclosures' as I worked for three employers for a brief period last year. A full disclosure is not limited to convictions but can include cautions and other information that the police may have. Bit more concrete than some prison manager having a quick look at a facebook profile. "Aside from the free speech concerns, Shear also thinks colleges take on unnecessary liability when they aggressively monitor student posts." Yes, I'd have thought there was a huge vicarious liability/duty of care issue with this. I don't want to know what my students put on their facebook accounts! "Goemann also noted that the rush to social media monitoring raises an often overlooked legal concern: It's against Facebook's Terms of Service." That occurred to me as well as soon as I read past the first few sentences. Many people on this forum provide Web services. Do you actually have any way/interest in enforcing this aspect of the typical ToS or is it just there as some kind of protection for you?
Sniffnoy 15y ago
It's worth noting that the "you have to add the coach as a friend" strategy has a hole in it now that Facebook has the "restricted" list, allowing you to apparently add someone as a friend without actually giving them any access. Of course, Facebook is so terrible to navigate that I'd bet most users don't even know this exists.
sdfjkl 15y ago
There can and must be only one answer to such a request: "You want WHAT!? Are you joking?" If they weren't joking, walk out immediately, stating why. Warn others. I could and would never work in a place where a "social network username and password" field has made it as far as the application process, even if it isn't mandatory (yet). And neither should you.
dreamdu5t 15y ago
We sounded the same alarm when employers started drug testing, and the majority of people defended the practice. "It's not a civil liberty issue, it's about employers protecting themselves. Only drug addicts oppose drug testing." How is this any different than drug testing employees?
jackcviers 15y ago
IANAL, but: It's easy, "Just Say No." If they really want the information, they'll get it somehow or refuse you employment, at which point they may open themselves for a lawsuit involving discrimination based upon race/sex/creed and/or privacy violation and/or libel and/or slander, which will net you more money than if you had accepted the job in the first place. If everyone in an industry begins to refuse you based on your privacy standards, you may be able to sue based on suspicion of collusion. On a humorous note, if personal lives are a deciding factor in whom a business chooses to employ over and above other, skills-based qualifications, the job you are applying to is likely very easy, and thus the kind of job that robots will be doing soon.
jgamman 15y ago
this is a business opportunity - curate some fb pages within a network with believable handles (ie, jj334) and then just sell them to a recent grad that wants a fb profile that looks squeaky clean. try not to put too many 'saved 4,000 kittens' links or it'll get suspicious... ;-) but seriously - scrubbing your youthful indiscretions from the goog or fb is a high-value service at a point in time where people realise they need it. btw i'm not saying the OP is right, i think it's a terrible precendent and i'd have told them to @#$@#$ off.
nokcha 15y ago
An employer or college who obtains an applicant's Facebook password and uses that password to access the applicant's Facebook account may be committing a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, prohibiting access of protected computer systems without authorization or in excess of authorization). (Note that the Facebook Terms of Service prohibit sharing one's password or logging in under another's account.) See http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-defendant-her-facebook-password-so-defendant-can-access-plaintiffs-account-as-part-of-discovery/ http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-... (noting that such access may be a federal crime even if authorized by a state court order). The statute (18 U.S.C. 1030) also creates a civil remedy; Facebook may be able to sue employers who access an applicant's account. Even if the statute is held to not apply in such situations (or held to be unconstitutional as applied in such situations [1]), Facebook may still be able to sue under state law for inducing said applicants to breach their contract with Facebook (tortious inteference) by sharing their password. [1] E.g., see U.S. v. Lori Drew, 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D. Cal. 2009), where a district court held that 18 U.S.C. 1030 criminalized TOS violations (including falsifying one's date of birth) but was unconstitutional in that regard.
- tibbon 15y ago
  interesting. I wonder why no one has tried this yet.
  - pmorici 15y ago
    If someone is dumb enough to give up their Facebook password I doubt they are well versed on the case law surrounding Federal computer crimes.
    - fletchowns 15y ago
      Ignorant maybe, but not dumb.
- just_madhu 15y ago
  This is relevant, but not really sufficient to prevent employers from accessing Facebook accounts. Employers that get "permission" from employees or candidates to access a social media account can (likely successfully?) argue that they are proxy for the account owner. We've seen something very similar in the discussions around data rights when people die-- family who inherit passwords are unlikely to be sued where there is explicit permission granted-- because they are not "impersonating" anyone. What could to prevent this is if requests in this manner can be considered coercion or duress-- automatically disqualifying contracts with language requiring disclosure of private passwords, and penalizing parties that try to include similar clauses. I'd love to cite some cases, but have to run (I do appreciate the legal thoroughness!)
mathattack 15y ago
I'm willing to say for many things, "You don't have to work there if you don't want to" but this particular issue bothers me. Most firms can Google you, and find a lot of public Facebook info. If that's not enough, asking for your password is basically wiretapping a mobile phone for which you make no business calls. It's VERY hard to live with this. I'm struggling to come up with any justification. About all I can fathom is a world in which they have to prove 100% that you're not insider trading. But if they need your Facebook to prove this, this need to tap your personal phone # and read all your snailmail too. And every personal email account. Wow this is depressing.
samstave 15y ago
While I don't have a facebook account, I would never give an employer ANY account credentials to ANY external service that was not theirs.
- cahrens 15y ago
  I wouldn't even give them the password to accounts I have on their systems, they should be able to access it themselves if the requester really has permission to view that data. The only exception I would make is to encrypted hard drives that they gave to me, but I would just de-crypt before ever giving them my password.
  - samstave 15y ago
    Exactly. It's like if any company asked you for this info - I would ask for access to the CEO's email - or the financial drive and tell them that in order to work there, you'll need to perform an audit of their ethics and finances to ensure your not engaging in a relationship with a criminal organization.
prophetjohn 15y ago
Pretty glad I work in an industry that's hard up for talent enough that I can walk out of an interview if I'm ever asked this, you guys. Not that I use Facebook or have used it in the past enough that there's anything on there I wouldn't want any given person to see, but this is some bullshit business.
tibbon 15y ago
Easy answer, is to either say "I'm not on Facebook" or simply give them access to a fake account. Everyone should be setting their Facebook settings to be reasonably strict so that they would have a damn hard time telling you have another profile.
drhowarddrfine 15y ago
So does law enforcement. Apply to be a cop, as my son is doing as I type this, be prepared to hand over your passwords so they can check your Facebook page out.
ggwicz 15y ago
This is disgusting. But be thankful for it: if a company or school does this, they're letting you know immediately that they're the type of soul-crushing institution that you wouldn't want to associate with in any fucking way. That could save you a lot of time, at least. (have to look at the bright side!)
unimpressive 15y ago
Honestly. I learned the hard way that you can't take back what you say on the net. No matter how young you may have been when you said it, or how you meant it when it was first written. If it can be misconstrued, it's there for all eternity. It's to the point where I think you could almost start one of those hipster movements I'm always hearing about. Give it a sophisticated name like Entropism. Set an example by running around the Internet behind seven proxies, inside a virtual machine, with JS disabled, running firefox, with a fake user agent, going over each one of your posts with a style-analysis program and dataset, clearing most history every five minutes, blocking cookies, deliberately messing with the response times of your hardware to prevent device fingerprinting, spoofing your MAC, etc etc.
int3rnaut 15y ago
For those struggling with privacy concerns, I have a very workable (albeit ugly) simple solution to this problem that actually works: Create a second Facebook account. You'll likely have to make other provisions--but if it's really a big deal, it's not that difficult or taxing, really. Plus you can have a bit of fun creating your fake you for these types of things.
dlikhten 15y ago
FUNNY: Friending a coach will have ZERO implication in Google+. Because there's no "Friend" post. It's by circles or with specific people. Privacy by default. Also my facebook answer is "i don't have one at the moment" and I wouldn't use my real name on facebook.

246 points by aspir 15y ago

This is unbelievable. With all of these studies showing up that employers/schools use public social media channels to make a decision on applicants, this is way over the top. Hopefully this ends fast.

tomjen3 15y ago
It is worse than that -- say you are friends with some former coworkers on facebook (because well, you actually like them) and they then show some other company their facebook page while interviewing there. They might or might not hire them, but even if they do, they have seen private stuff that you might cause them to not hire you.
- maxerickson 15y ago
  Your 'friend' could gossip about you without even using a computer.

16s 15y ago

What about those of us who have no Facebook account?

tomjen3 15y ago
Well you won't be friend-ed by me. But you can always create a phony one.
perucoder 15y ago
It will probably get to a point where employers think you are lying because "everyone" has a facebook account.
- martingordon 15y ago
  Yup. Pretty soon a Facebook account (with a semblance of some activity) will be required to get a job.
  - kamjam 15y ago
    Yup, just like every developer must have Twitter, GitHub, an open suorce code repo, StackOverflow profile, professional blog, tumblr account etc etc. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669568 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669568 Personally, I like to have a real life off the computer sometimes.
    - devs1010 15y ago
      I hope you realize that you are exaggerating. Out of all of those, the only one that an employer has ever had any interest in was my GitHub account and I have gotten software dev jobs before I even had one
      - perucoder 15y ago
        Thats not true. I've had several employers tell me that not having a LinkedIn account was amateurish.
      - kamjam 15y ago
        Of course i'm exaggerating, I've worked in software for 10 years and never had any of those. Until about 3 months ago I didn't have a twitter account. I've never been out of work. BUT, the amount of people that look at me funny because I didn't, and the article that i linked to just reinforces that.
loungin 15y ago
I'd consider that a plus. (No account here either)
astrodust 15y ago
I can't wait for a service to pop up where for $500 they will make you an amazing, sterling Facebook account you can "share" with people. It will be populated with believable postings from other people you know, yet all of these other people will be cardboard cut-outs.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  My cousin and I came up with a similar idea; we called it Fakebook, and then promptly went on to forget about it. There's gold in them there hills, though!
- AkThhhpppt 15y ago
  Sounds familiar: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html
WiseWeasel 15y ago
We are to be burned at the stake for social crimes.

tomjen3 15y ago

Great, now I have to go unfriend everybody who might be willing to hand over their access since they would otherwise allow others to see what I have written.

funkah 15y ago

I've noticed a lot of people on Facebook who use nicknames or "first name plus some other word" instead of their real names. I imagine this is intended to keep anyone from searching their real name with Google or Facebook and finding that profile. But it's a short step from that, to having two or more Facebook accounts, one to be the person's "public face" and the rest for the actual things people do on Facebook.

X-Istence 15y ago

I would laugh in their faces so hard, and just turn around and walk away. I am neither handing over, nor logging in for my bosses to see. I've had a post that I accidentally made public on my Facebook come back to bite me in the ass, and it won't happen ever again.

dmils4 15y ago
For college athletes sometimes that option isn't there. If you've only got one school interested in you, and they're requiring you to provide it - calling their bluff is a risky move (on the other hand, might be worth pursuing a career in something other than sports if you're only talking to one school).
- kamjam 15y ago
  So just create a 2nd "fake" account with seemingly "real" data and show them that. Or tell them you don't actually have a facebook account. It is possible to set the security so that people are unable to find/search for you. Anyway, I presume this is a US thing, this would never happen in the EU, it would go to the european court of human rights (or some court or other) so fast you won't even have time to apply lube!
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > So just create a 2nd "fake" account with seemingly "real" data and show them that. I imagine that with the username/password, they'd notice that it was created two weeks ago, and that your friend network is all bots.
    - kamjam 15y ago
      The article says they are longer requesting username/password and instead looking over the shoulder. Why not add in some of your real friends? I said nothing about bots. Tell them why you need this. Change the name of your real account to something else. Hide it. Disable it. I think also that the new facebook timeline allows you to place "stories" and "events" to any point of time in the past. Or start deleting what you want hidden from your facebook account and then hand over the details. Or, how about some foresight. I don't know, how about I create a second account and keep that running side by side right now, because I'm in one of those industries that are douches about this kind of thing. I know some people that do this to keep stuff hidden from family members. Man, I have to think of everything round here... :) Everything I've just said I think is extremely wrong and if an employer asked me for these then I'd tell them to go fk themselves.

aspir 15y ago

I was a college athlete back in the day, and my athletic department tried to do something similar -- they would make shell accounts controlled by athletics/ncaa compliance and try to friend whole teams. We got around it by having a shared block list of the shells. If I recall correctly, we had 20 at a given time. But, our team was small (30 people), and not in the "money sports" (football, basketball, baseball), so we could get away with this. Larger teams in higher profile sports won't be able to do this.

epochwolf 15y ago

You have to be kidding me. This kind of violation of privacy is unconscionable.

SMrF 15y ago

And then the article requires a Facebook account to comment. "Hey look, we're quickly aggregating all of our personal data into one centralized place creating an obviously appealing target for authority as evidenced by this recent trend of college sports programs invading the privacy of students. Let's all talk about it on Facebook."

jgrahamc 15y ago
Yes, this is one of the worst trends right now. It's one of the primary reasons I killed my Facebook account and null routed all Facebook on my home network. Any site that requires Facebook as a login or comment function is dead to me.
- RexRollman 15y ago
  I feel the same way, which makes me lucky that I opened a Spotify account when I did.
- samstave 15y ago
  Its the reason I boycott techcrunch articles (aside from the lack of any editing).
ceejayoz 15y ago
I need a job more than I need to comment on a news article, though.

mcos 15y ago

Who's to know whether or not Facebook is considering plans to monetize this sort of behaviour by offerring institutions you have listed on your profile the opportunity to see everything you have listed for a fee.

didgeoridoo 15y ago
Considering that if this practice were revealed, it would cause a total collapse in Facebook's user base and thus its revenue engine... unlikely, to say the least.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Most people don't care about privacy violations. That's especially true of the Facebook userbase, because if they did care they would not be Facebook users. Seriously, most people will say things like "I don't have anything to hide so it doesn't bother me".
  - jonnathanson 15y ago
    I don't know if it's apathy, so much as it's lack of awareness. People are simply ignorant of how the things they say and post on Facebook can come back to haunt them, and when, and with whom, and in which settings. It's a safe bet to assume that most Facebook users simply don't know how Facebook data works, or what its ramifications could be. They won't know, or care, until they run into a specific case where it affects them -- at which point, chances are, it will have taken them entirely by surprise. (It takes only one off-handed reference to a drunken Facebook photo in a job interview, for instance, to put the fear of God into many users). I'm not suggesting that people would abandon Facebook en masse if they were better informed about it. And hell, I'm not sure many people even would care all that much. But I bet you'd see a marked shift in user behavior in pretty much any users in college or older. (Basically, anyone thinking about employment).
  - smacktoward 15y ago
    The only reason they don't care is because not caring hasn't gotten them burned yet. Sometimes people have to learn things the hard way...

lukeschlather 15y ago

>Shear has gotten the attention of Maryland state legislators, who have proposed two separate bills aimed at banning social media access by schools and potential employers. Why is this specifically targeted at social media? No one should request copies of people's private keys as part of any routine interview process. This is no different from asking for a copy of someone's PO box key, and the law should also clearly say that that is illegal (if it isn't already?)

akdetrick 15y ago
I'm no less disturbed by this than anyone else, but you do not truly own your Facebook account in the way that you would own a PO box. Your data belongs to Facebook, not to you. Sad, but true. Edit: (submitted too soon) I'm sure there's something legally dubious about requesting private keys in this way, but the PO box example was a clear reminder to me about how we wrongly think of our data on private services as "ours".
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  Really, I think I'm being charitable towards the schools with my interpretation. If we look at it from the "Facebook owns your data" perspective, then you have no right to give them your keys even if you honestly want to, because that's against Facebook's TOS and the employer/school could be charged with felony unauthorized use of computing resources, aka hacking. Really, I'm probably trying to hard. This is phishing, plain and simple, and should be treated as such.
- superuser2 15y ago
  Facebook's "ownership" of your data is no different from that of Yahoo! Mail, GMail, cell phone companies, landline phone companies, the postal service, Western Union, and all the other organizations people been sending messages through for hundreds of years. (Skype being P2P and encrypted might make it an exception...) Facebook has no more or less access to/ownership of your life than your ISP and cell phone company.

raganwald 15y ago

Here’s what I said the last time around: First, I consider this the equivalent of asking to record conversations I have with my friends. If you as an employer think that it’s part of your business to eavesdrop on my friendships and romances, then we know where we stand and I will be over here working with someone else. Second, I can’t give you my FB credentials even if I wanted to. The reason is that by doing so, I am violating the privacy expectations of other people, who do not expect that the things they share with me in private messages or on their wall or photos will be shared with my employer. I have a similar arrangement with the person I date. She is welcome to ask me about my FB and email, however she is not allowed to rifle through it at will because other people may have an expectation of privacy in things they have emailed me.

gxs 15y ago
This may work for you now, and I stand my ground the same way, the reason this is so alarming is because eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you simply won't have a choice. I am curious, however, what will happen to people who really don't have a facebook. I've never had an account, would they believe me or assume I deleted it?
- AlexandrB 15y ago
  > This may work for you now, and I stand my ground the same way, the reason this is so alarming is because eventually, EVERY employer may ask this and then you simply won't have a choice. At that point I delete my Facebook account and never look back.
  - stavrianos 15y ago
    This is the correct solution.
  - bilbo0s 15y ago
    It's never gone though... As soon as you apply for a job that is high level or sensitive enough, that information will be part of the dossier they review. Depending what is in your FB, or any other comment history you may have, it MIGHT be wise to keep that FB. Lest they think you were trying to hide something.

joelrunyon 15y ago

If you're going in for an interview and now this is a requirement, why don't you just deactivate your account and tell them that. Then, if you get the job (although I don't think I'd want to work at a place that's looking over my shoulder constantly), you can reactivate it whenever you want.

ttt_ 15y ago

Social media is becoming the main agent of a police state in a frightenly quick pace. I'm starting to think that the only reason these practices were not so common before was because of a technical barrier, and not because our rights were once valued. Putting bugs in your phone and residence is difficult, requires technical expertise and people to actually monitor. So well, what can you do? Like the article says, the option was to educate. But then comes social media and kills the technical barrier, so great, lets spy on our students, candidates, etc, and have them give us clearence to do so through intimidation. We never had those rights to begin with, spying was just more of a hassle then than it is now. Now begins the real fight for those rights. If we fail, then we are left with a socialitariam-regime and forced to keep using some hypocritical-media in order to be able to get jobs/loans/etc while we keep private matters offline (until new technology breaks that barrier too).

yuhong 15y ago
IMO the solution is to fix the root social/cultural causes. Get rid of the illusion that people are perfect, for example.
- ericb 15y ago
  This won't work in practice. Any situation with many equally qualified people competing for a very small number of spots becomes what amounts to a beauty pageant. What I mean by "beauty pageant" is that since every candidate is so well-qualified, any superficial imperfection begins to be treated as a useful criteria for selection. When all worthwhile criteria are equal, worthless criteria are used to decide. "This guy swore in a facebook post, so lets go with the other guy."
  - yuhong 15y ago
    Yea I know, one of the reasons anti-discrimination laws are fundamentally flawed. Fixing the root social/cultural causes is a better idea.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Right, re-engineering human nature from the ground up is clearly much easier.

carbocation 15y ago

> All this scrutiny is too much for Bradley Shear, a Washington D.C.-lawyer who says both schools and employers are violating the First Amendment with demands for access to otherwise private social media content. > "I can't believe some people think it's OK to do this,” he said. “Maybe it's OK if you live in a totalitarian regime, but we still have a Constitution to protect us. It's not a far leap from reading people's Facebook posts to reading their email. ... As a society, where are we going to draw the line?" Surely they are misquoting this lawyer, or did the First Amendment start applying to corporations all of a sudden?

evan_ 15y ago
That's where I stopped reading. Maybe he's thinking about state funded schools, or applying for government jobs? It still doesn't make a lot of sense.
orbd 15y ago
Considering he is referencing the Maryland Dept of Corrections and the University of Virginia, a public institution, I'd say the 1st Amendment applies. UNC is also a public university and is mentioned prominently.

modeless 15y ago

Any employer who does this would leave themselves wide open to lawsuits based on anti-discrimination laws, as there's no way you can troll someone's private Facebook profile without learning protected information such as age, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, etc.

orbitingpluto 15y ago

Meanwhile I am trying to read the article and having problems doing so because ghostery keeps on popping up notifications of adblocking. I might aquiesce to a FB access request as long as I was also given access to all emails, phone calls, SIN numbers, banking information and sexual habits of the Deans or CEO of the institution. That seems fair, considering I never use FB.

billpg 15y ago

"Sure. My password is =rk#C0|q7_Mf@zrtf'XnM/'2C3ZTJ1[*/>)1Wk(sr&+z0pEG/}jmN_3[jI:jp( I'll write it down for you on a piece of paper." "Yes, that's really my password. High security. Don't you have a secure password like that? You really should you know." "It didn't work? Are you sure you typed it in correctly? Try it again."

TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
Personally, I'd write my password in an obscure Unicode-supported script that is unavailable in most fonts.
- pjscott 15y ago
  Be sure you go outside the Basic Multilingual Plane. A lot of software runs into weird bugs when you use characters that can't be represented in 16 bits in UTF-16. Bonus points if it uses bidirectional control characters.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    You might as well add a few 'drop table;'s in there, just in case. That way, if/when your potential employers accidentally wipe the databases at Facebook (or wherever they happen to be invading your privacy), they'll have two lawsuits on their hands! (The first being the one you file for an invasion of privacy, of course).

bilbo0s 15y ago

I'm just going to repost a comment I made during an HN thread on trolling here: "....However, on a general note, I think it is important to realize that every text message you send, every cell phone conversation you have, every post to the CNN forum you make, every tweet you send ... is directly attributable to your IP whether you use your own name or not. With Facebook and Google tracking everything you do, whether you are logged in or not, I would go one step further, and say all of these things are directly attributable to you personally. I would strongly urge young people to really think about what they are putting out there. Consider this, the military was doing the equivalent of credit checks for sensitive positions during the 60s. Now you need a credit check to do ANYTHING, even things that don't require credit. How long before an internet and phone background check is standard in the background checks organizations do before offering jobs? I can tell you the military is doing this sort of screening right now for sensitive positions, but at least you are confronted about it. It still basically ends your career, but they will give you a chance to explain your posts. In the private sector in the future, they will just deep six your application and you won't know what happened. Or they'll let you in at entry level, maybe, and subsequently you'll start running up against an invisible barrier as you try to advance beyond the first or second layer of management. Or you will find resistance to you advancing into management at all. Also be mindful, it can affect more than your professional life. Think about what the background checks for apartments will look like in the 2020s. Or what 'dating sites' will be like in the 2020s. Please consider your future before you make comments on ... say ... black people and Hurricane Katrina ... that might be misconstrued. Or post an opinion on ... say ... American soldiers in Afghanistan ... that could be taken out of context and viewed in a negative light. All that said, the absolute best defense against these sorts of situations is just not to be a douche, which isn't very hard..." ---- I think that comment is apropos here as well. I encourage all of the young people I work with, as often as I can, to be careful about what comments they put ANYWHERE on the internet. To be mindful of what they say during ANY cell phone conversation. And to try to limit their use of text messaging. I know this sucks, but this stuff is serious...these things WILL affect your future.

kruhft 15y ago
Freedom of speech, just watch what you say.

achompas 15y ago

For those who don't click through, the article's title is supremely misleading. There are only anecdotes about corrections departments and college athletics. But hoooooly crap this little gem: Social media monitoring on colleges, while spreading quickly among athletic departments, seems to be limited to athletes at the moment. There's nothing stopping schools from applying the same policies to other students, however. Look, college athletics has a lot of issues. Colleges secure all economic benefits associated with player performance in exchange for a college scholarship (I hope O'Bannon v. NCAA solves that problem soon). [0] But how can anyone extrapolate requirements from college athletes to the entire student body? Would any Ivy School dream of asking an applicant for their password, when said applicant's mother might be a partner at a law firm? What about the constitutional issues regarding the same request from a public university (funded by taxpayer money)? [0] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/?single_page=true http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-sham...

gcb 15y ago

Really are we discussing msn articles now? But to give perspective here: this is for college athletes. Nothing new. Those people, usually, agree to several freedom limitations, such as ridicule curfews and sex life control before games and such. I doubt one more freedom limitation is any concern. About the fears of it leaking to other jobs, well they are doing that for decades and you still have to hear your manager saying the curfew today will be 3pm cuz he do not want you making sex before the launch tomorrow.

dacilselig 15y ago
I understand that msn articles can contain sensationalism and may not contain the most accurate facts, however let's not make a hasty generalization. Freedom limitations such a curfew and sex life control, are by design there to limit the person's physical behavior, where being forced to provide your password to your social media account, an area where you feel that you can speak freely as a person, has nothing to do with trying to increase one's physical performance. To me, this just seem's to be a way to protect their institution. For example, It get's leaked that their QB believes in the Communism movement, which could reflect poorly on the school. This goes against progress as we are judging athletes based on their believes and not their athletic abilities. I find that the issue is more complicated than it just being something athletes should adapt to since they agree to give up certain freedoms when they join a team.

joezydeco 15y ago

I wonder if I could, in return, ask for a company's accounts payable queue and bank balance. I mean, how do I know that this company is trustworthy? Are they paying their bills on time? Is there cash in the bank?

CPops 15y ago

* It goes without saying that a request for access to personal data like this is something that nobody should ever comply with. * Asking somebody for access to their email/social network account is actually a great question to ask in a job interview. If somebody is so careless about their private data to easily give away access to it upon request, that would easily disqualify them in my book.

Lukeas14 15y ago

So glad I work in an industry where I'm comfortable saying no if asked for my Facebook login, knowing I can then go talk to the next company down the street. I can't imagine being in the position where my college scholarship or only job opportunity I may have for 3 months is at risk unless I provide my superiors with access to my most private conversations.

fragsworth 15y ago

As a Facebook game developer, all of our employees are friends with everyone in the company. We wouldn't require any of our employees to do this but so far none have complained. I think, however, that someone who didn't friend us would somehow be alienated from the rest of the company. I don't know how a situation like that should be properly handled.

dinkumthinkum 15y ago
This is your reaction to this? Really? I wouldn't comment except that you say you're a Facebook game developer; it's like being a part of the problem. If anything, I would think the FB dev community and FB itself should make statements stating that they publicly disagree with how organizations are using their services to abuse their users and that is highly unethical. I prefer that to tacit acceptance, personally.
trustfundbaby 15y ago
As a Facebook game developer, all of our employees are friends with everyone in the company -------------------- And this is why Facebook is going to crap ... the idea that you can just friend anybody is why myspace quickly became a ghetto and facebook will eventually go down that road too.

lmarinho 15y ago

Is there a running list of companies/colleges that engage in this kind of practice? I'd like to know to keep my distance from them. Since they are so keen on invading other peoples privacies I gather they wouldn't mind being exposed on this issue.

mindcrime 15y ago

The next (which would be the first) employer who asks me for information of that nature will be politely asked to perform a variety of degrading sexual acts with themselves, various farm animals, and several types of construction equipment and power tools. When I get done laughing, I'll happily write down my 'password' for them: if they have any shame, they'll be beet red when they get done reading it. OK, I probably won't get the job, but that's OK since it's clearly somewhere I wouldn't actually have wanted to work anyway. Seriously, this whole notion is so asinine that it's almost beyond belief. I mean, why not just ask me for a copy of the key to my PO box, a copy of my car key, permission to tap my phone, and access to put a camera in my living room? Get real, people...

dinkumthinkum 15y ago

This doesn't make any sense. What if I don't have any social media, in fact, how do you even know that I do and that it that account searched, is, in fact, me. Why don't you also ask me to surrender my cell phone and dig through all my text messages; why not read my email and look in my bathroom as well?

smacktoward 15y ago

"Before we hire you, we'd like you to make a copy of your house keys for us. You know, so we can check in occasionally and make sure you're not doing anything that would make The Company look bad..."

Chrono 15y ago

Insanity. I would never in my life willingly give up any of my passwords, to anyone. Especially not something that contains so much private information as Facebook. Sure, Facebook themselves may share some of that information, or all if asked by a court but generally speaking it is somewhat safe. Want my Facebook password? No thank you, I will go somewhere else.

vibrunazo 15y ago

This gives me an idea of how to understand a developer's integrity and views on privacy before hiring. Ask them if they're ok with giving you their facebook account. But don't really ask for it. If they ask "so should I write down my password". You just say "I don't really want your account, just wanted to know if you were ok with it".

rfrey 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment Only illegal if you're a law enforcement officer in most developed countries. But unethical even if you're not.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  What? It's not a request to commit a crime, it's a check of the strength of their belief in privacy. There's nothing wrong with the action you're asking them to do.

dangoldin 15y ago

If only no one actually succumbed to the demands. Then the colleges and employers would have no choice but to reverse the decision. Unfortunately, those who agree to this will coerce others to do the same. Talk about a perverse network effect.

horsehead 15y ago

I really enjoy seeing these social media articles. I got in trouble with my employer for a post on a friends social media page that my employer found out about (a coworker was trying to get me fired, it turns out) and threatened me with firing. The post was unrelated to work, but they deemed it as reflecting poorly on the company. learn the hard way I suppose? in any case, I still feel that social media sites are plagued by abuse by third parties.

brador 15y ago

I love how, even without a constitution, things like this would never fly in Europe, yet here in the US, WITH a constitution, we get these events taking place. It's almost like the existence of the constitution encourages challenges to privacy. The "if you had a defense but didn't use it then you must be okay with what's happening" thinking.

eCa 15y ago
Which European country does not have a constitution?
- brador 15y ago
  England doesn't have a constitution as far as I know.
  - eCa 15y ago
    Interesting. I got some reading to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_King... "No Act of Parliament can be unconstitutional, for the law of the land knows not the word or the idea."
keithpeter 15y ago
In UK we have the Criminal Records Bureau who provide a full record check for people in certain occupations (working with children, prison/police/uniformed services &c) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/crb/ http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/crb/ I have three current CRB 'disclosures' as I worked for three employers for a brief period last year. A full disclosure is not limited to convictions but can include cautions and other information that the police may have. Bit more concrete than some prison manager having a quick look at a facebook profile. "Aside from the free speech concerns, Shear also thinks colleges take on unnecessary liability when they aggressively monitor student posts." Yes, I'd have thought there was a huge vicarious liability/duty of care issue with this. I don't want to know what my students put on their facebook accounts! "Goemann also noted that the rush to social media monitoring raises an often overlooked legal concern: It's against Facebook's Terms of Service." That occurred to me as well as soon as I read past the first few sentences. Many people on this forum provide Web services. Do you actually have any way/interest in enforcing this aspect of the typical ToS or is it just there as some kind of protection for you?

Sniffnoy 15y ago

It's worth noting that the "you have to add the coach as a friend" strategy has a hole in it now that Facebook has the "restricted" list, allowing you to apparently add someone as a friend without actually giving them any access. Of course, Facebook is so terrible to navigate that I'd bet most users don't even know this exists.

sdfjkl 15y ago

There can and must be only one answer to such a request: "You want WHAT!? Are you joking?" If they weren't joking, walk out immediately, stating why. Warn others. I could and would never work in a place where a "social network username and password" field has made it as far as the application process, even if it isn't mandatory (yet). And neither should you.

dreamdu5t 15y ago

We sounded the same alarm when employers started drug testing, and the majority of people defended the practice. "It's not a civil liberty issue, it's about employers protecting themselves. Only drug addicts oppose drug testing." How is this any different than drug testing employees?

jackcviers 15y ago

IANAL, but: It's easy, "Just Say No." If they really want the information, they'll get it somehow or refuse you employment, at which point they may open themselves for a lawsuit involving discrimination based upon race/sex/creed and/or privacy violation and/or libel and/or slander, which will net you more money than if you had accepted the job in the first place. If everyone in an industry begins to refuse you based on your privacy standards, you may be able to sue based on suspicion of collusion. On a humorous note, if personal lives are a deciding factor in whom a business chooses to employ over and above other, skills-based qualifications, the job you are applying to is likely very easy, and thus the kind of job that robots will be doing soon.

jgamman 15y ago

this is a business opportunity - curate some fb pages within a network with believable handles (ie, jj334) and then just sell them to a recent grad that wants a fb profile that looks squeaky clean. try not to put too many 'saved 4,000 kittens' links or it'll get suspicious... ;-) but seriously - scrubbing your youthful indiscretions from the goog or fb is a high-value service at a point in time where people realise they need it. btw i'm not saying the OP is right, i think it's a terrible precendent and i'd have told them to @#$@#$ off.

nokcha 15y ago

An employer or college who obtains an applicant's Facebook password and uses that password to access the applicant's Facebook account may be committing a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 1030 (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, prohibiting access of protected computer systems without authorization or in excess of authorization). (Note that the Facebook Terms of Service prohibit sharing one's password or logging in under another's account.) See http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-defendant-her-facebook-password-so-defendant-can-access-plaintiffs-account-as-part-of-discovery/ http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/judge-orders-plaintiff-to-give-... (noting that such access may be a federal crime even if authorized by a state court order). The statute (18 U.S.C. 1030) also creates a civil remedy; Facebook may be able to sue employers who access an applicant's account. Even if the statute is held to not apply in such situations (or held to be unconstitutional as applied in such situations [1]), Facebook may still be able to sue under state law for inducing said applicants to breach their contract with Facebook (tortious inteference) by sharing their password. [1] E.g., see U.S. v. Lori Drew, 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D. Cal. 2009), where a district court held that 18 U.S.C. 1030 criminalized TOS violations (including falsifying one's date of birth) but was unconstitutional in that regard.

tibbon 15y ago
interesting. I wonder why no one has tried this yet.
- pmorici 15y ago
  If someone is dumb enough to give up their Facebook password I doubt they are well versed on the case law surrounding Federal computer crimes.
  - fletchowns 15y ago
    Ignorant maybe, but not dumb.
just_madhu 15y ago
This is relevant, but not really sufficient to prevent employers from accessing Facebook accounts. Employers that get "permission" from employees or candidates to access a social media account can (likely successfully?) argue that they are proxy for the account owner. We've seen something very similar in the discussions around data rights when people die-- family who inherit passwords are unlikely to be sued where there is explicit permission granted-- because they are not "impersonating" anyone. What could to prevent this is if requests in this manner can be considered coercion or duress-- automatically disqualifying contracts with language requiring disclosure of private passwords, and penalizing parties that try to include similar clauses. I'd love to cite some cases, but have to run (I do appreciate the legal thoroughness!)

mathattack 15y ago

I'm willing to say for many things, "You don't have to work there if you don't want to" but this particular issue bothers me. Most firms can Google you, and find a lot of public Facebook info. If that's not enough, asking for your password is basically wiretapping a mobile phone for which you make no business calls. It's VERY hard to live with this. I'm struggling to come up with any justification. About all I can fathom is a world in which they have to prove 100% that you're not insider trading. But if they need your Facebook to prove this, this need to tap your personal phone # and read all your snailmail too. And every personal email account. Wow this is depressing.

samstave 15y ago

While I don't have a facebook account, I would never give an employer ANY account credentials to ANY external service that was not theirs.

cahrens 15y ago
I wouldn't even give them the password to accounts I have on their systems, they should be able to access it themselves if the requester really has permission to view that data. The only exception I would make is to encrypted hard drives that they gave to me, but I would just de-crypt before ever giving them my password.
- samstave 15y ago
  Exactly. It's like if any company asked you for this info - I would ask for access to the CEO's email - or the financial drive and tell them that in order to work there, you'll need to perform an audit of their ethics and finances to ensure your not engaging in a relationship with a criminal organization.

prophetjohn 15y ago

Pretty glad I work in an industry that's hard up for talent enough that I can walk out of an interview if I'm ever asked this, you guys. Not that I use Facebook or have used it in the past enough that there's anything on there I wouldn't want any given person to see, but this is some bullshit business.

tibbon 15y ago

Easy answer, is to either say "I'm not on Facebook" or simply give them access to a fake account. Everyone should be setting their Facebook settings to be reasonably strict so that they would have a damn hard time telling you have another profile.

drhowarddrfine 15y ago

So does law enforcement. Apply to be a cop, as my son is doing as I type this, be prepared to hand over your passwords so they can check your Facebook page out.

ggwicz 15y ago

This is disgusting. But be thankful for it: if a company or school does this, they're letting you know immediately that they're the type of soul-crushing institution that you wouldn't want to associate with in any fucking way. That could save you a lot of time, at least. (have to look at the bright side!)

unimpressive 15y ago

Honestly. I learned the hard way that you can't take back what you say on the net. No matter how young you may have been when you said it, or how you meant it when it was first written. If it can be misconstrued, it's there for all eternity. It's to the point where I think you could almost start one of those hipster movements I'm always hearing about. Give it a sophisticated name like Entropism. Set an example by running around the Internet behind seven proxies, inside a virtual machine, with JS disabled, running firefox, with a fake user agent, going over each one of your posts with a style-analysis program and dataset, clearing most history every five minutes, blocking cookies, deliberately messing with the response times of your hardware to prevent device fingerprinting, spoofing your MAC, etc etc.

int3rnaut 15y ago

For those struggling with privacy concerns, I have a very workable (albeit ugly) simple solution to this problem that actually works: Create a second Facebook account. You'll likely have to make other provisions--but if it's really a big deal, it's not that difficult or taxing, really. Plus you can have a bit of fun creating your fake you for these types of things.

dlikhten 15y ago

FUNNY: Friending a coach will have ZERO implication in Google+. Because there's no "Friend" post. It's by circles or with specific people. Privacy by default. Also my facebook answer is "i don't have one at the moment" and I wouldn't use my real name on facebook.