Just imagine. You’re about to land a job after a successful interview or a deserved promotion at your place of work but then the employer says, “we have to conduct a background check by investigating your social media accounts.”
That could include websites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram among others. But what if your accounts aren’t publically viewable? Employers could conduct this background check by asking you to log into your accounts during the interview for them to investigate, have you add an employee or third party company as a friend so they can conduct the check or even ask you for your password.
In cases of hiring, the Society for Human Resource Management, a national human resources firm produced a survey that found 77 percent of companies used social networking sites in 2013.
But the percentage of companies that asked prospective employees for their passwords solely is uncertain but it’s obviously a significant number since the practice has been banned in at least 13 states within both the public and private sectors. Similar legislation has been introduced in other states such as Florida, known as senate bill 126.
In 2012, Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook released a statement concerning this issue, “We have worked really hard at Facebook to give you the tools to control who sees your information. As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job. And as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job. That’s why we’ve made it a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to share or solicit a Facebook password.”
So it does violate the contract that one makes whenever they make an account on Facebook but why else is it a problem if people have nothing to hide? Companies have no business prying into that part of their employee’s lives. If people live in a culture to where they have to watch absolutely everything they do and say on social networking sites in fear of job security, people would naturally mold themselves into very unthreatening and uninteresting individuals on their own.
It’s a very dangerous and ominous terrain that companies are venturing into. Years ago, before the digital age, before the Internet, would employers ask their employees for copies of their mail, accounts of dinner conversations and phone calls? If the answer is no, there’s the answer.