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Why Making Facebook Private Won't Protect You
itwbennett writes "Facebook's privacy settings, such as they are, don't hold up in the face of prospective employers who demand to see applicants' profiles. In an MSNBC report, Bob Sullivan found that 'in Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall. ... Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed wire fence, coaches and administrators are forcing student athletes to 'friend' them in order to monitor their activity of social sites."
Between cell phone location and call logs, and Facebook, Americans now volunteer for a kind of self-surveillance the former USSR only dreamt of having on its citizens!
I'm happy to live in a country where such practices are illegal.
We all seem very determined to turn our countries into fascist states don't we? This sort of intrusion into people's private lives shouldn't be tolerated, but the public outcry is negligible.
Better solution if you do use Facebook: laugh at the people demanding to see what you're up to and walk away.
Here's the secret to immortality:
Simple until a prospective employer asks you to log in.
"I don't have an account." = Liar. Don't hire him.
"I don't have an account." = Something to hide. Don't hire him.
"I don't have an account." = Antisocial, won't work well with others. Don't hire him.
"I don't have an account." = Has a brain, probably won't follow my instructions unquestioningly and take the blame for fuck ups silently. Don't hire him.
The only winning move is not to play, and by that I mean walking out of interviews. Yes, easier said than done if you don't have a job, but hey... "They tree of liberty..." etc.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It shouldn't be hard to allow users to add a distress password that would make Facebook appear logged in but would hide anything that would not be visible to outsiders.
If it's a checkbox requirement, that won't help. "Don't have an account." "Right. Refused to log into Facebook. And now Google+, please."
I'm not usually one for regulation, but this seems like an easy one. Employers must not require employees, contractors or applicants to interact with the company through any social networking service with their personal accounts. Employers must not require employees, contractors or applicants to utilize any social networking service with their personal accounts. Employers may require employees to interact with the company and use a company-provided account on a social networking service as part of their regular job. This could easily fit into a fair employment act.
(I look forward to holes being poked in my prospective law.)
Of course, you could just ask them to login too, and you can skim through their page(s) whilst they do the same to yours! As others have said, simply tell them you're not on FB (or any of the others) but you are willing to start one up if it is a requirement.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Practically that'll probably work (although it's by no means guaranteed), but it shows tacit approval of this invasive idiocy when the real response should make clear that what they are doing is wrong. Of course, that does assume the ability to walk away from a job opportunity without excessive repercussions...
Except an employer doesn't need you. They just need someone. If it's a highly competitive position, they aren't going to give a shit if you walk out--they've got 100 other candidates to pick from, and only a handful might pull the same "I'm not sharing my Facebook info" routine.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
It stopped being your private life when you posted it to the Internet.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
This (perhaps naive) effort is an attempt to prevent gang agents from infiltrating the department. Local gangs are actively recruiting relatives and acquaintances without criminal histories to work as correctional officers. Many of those job applicants are barely literate and do not realize that their Facebook pages are a give away of their gang connections. They simply give up that information. Apparently, the next step would be full lifestyle checks akin to what fed agencies do. Much more expensive but also effective. Disclaimer: I do work for MD DPSCS.
Of course, that does assume the ability to walk away from a job opportunity without excessive repercussions...
Therein lies the problem, of course. My first reaction on seeing this was "Right, I'm not taking that job... I'm not even finishing the interview." Then I thought back to a few periods in my life where my ability to live without outside support had been put into serious question by lack of employment; and realized that while I may say that now, there have been times and may be times again where I needed the job. It's easy to be choosey from the relative comfort of a pretty good paying job. I have enough savings now that I'd be fine for several months at least in the event of job loss, so I don't see me being that desperate any time soon. But let's face it. Life's sometimes a bitch. Anything could happen.
That said, I've held a security clearance, and known people with even higher security ratings; and even the Feds don't go demanding to see your Facebook profile. This shit is ridiculous.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
How about maintain two FB profiles, one for friends and one 'work safe' one with work colleagues on it.
Better solution - Maintain a fake 2nd page covered in information about how much you support various federally protected classes to which you may (or may not) actually belong.
Then watch them squirm when they try to come up with any plausible reason to give the job to the boss' young white Christian nephew rather than to a reasonably qualified older gay Muslim African-American (whether in the "Samuel Jackson" or the "Dave Matthews" sense of the term).
Asking for access to personal material opens a whole can of legal issues that most employers don't want, and it surprises me any would actively seek to subject themselves to such accusations. Hell, my own current employer actually has a policy banning managers from searching the intarwebs for job applicants, just to avoid these issues.
This. A million times this. The fact that employers get away with this and the Feds can't really shows that there is something seriously wrong. Coporations can invade us day and night blatantly, but if you're a federal agency you might need to jump through some hoops first. Since when are corporations allowed to go above the law?
I had one prospective employer ask if I had a FB account. "No. That's just too first grade for me."
Interesting reaction. He really wanted to ask something, but he kind of shut down in three of four steps and went on to something else.
No, I didn't take that job anyway. Other reasons. You can always out-wit the PHBs.
But did/do you have one?
I suppose I would answer with a question "Why do you want to know?" (Yeah I know this pisses a lot of interviewers off. I am not one of them, however, I want people to answer my interview questions with another question, it shows they are thinking.)
If they just wanted to use Facebook as an example for some scenario, I would answer differently than if someone someone wanted to mention their batshit insane policy.
Regardless if I have x or y social media account, I will respectfully and efficiently terminate any interview where social media contact is an issue. Regardless of the legality or ethics of snooping personal info, I just don't see myself working at a place where that level of pervasiveness is required. As an interviewee I actually ask about personnel policies. Most people do not even know about them until they read the employee handbook (well after they have accepted their offer and started work).
This is related to companies with the "we own anything you think about while you work here" policy. I worked at a place that got acquired and decided to change the agreement to including a "no side work" policy, and you cannot work in the "same industry within 100 miles any city we have an office (by the way we have an office within 100 miles of every city in your country)" policy. I just flatly refused to sign the new agreement, and informed my coworkers to do the same. The company allowed us to add a grandfather clause on this. And even then they tried suing a group of my friends that left for a competitor.
I lost track of where I was going with this, except that... "Fuck any company that tries to implement an overreaching employee policy. Especially if it is legal."
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Considering that the interview was for work in a prison, perhaps there's another reason?
If I were hiring people to be peace officers, and asked them to show me their Facebook profile during an interview, I would not hire anybody who accepted and let me look at the profile. If they don't understand that it's wrong to search without probable cause to suspect wrongdoing, then I don't want them in that job.
Then again, the fact that I think like that would probably disqualify me from being in a position where I'm making that kind of hiring decision....
> and even the Feds don't go demanding to see your Facebook profile.
That's probably because they don't need your permission in order to look at your profile. My understanding is that background checks by the FBI include a review of your online profiles - they just do it through a back channel that isn't public.
I recently interviewed a sysadmin who had no privacy settings on his facebook page. I found this a little troubling because I find innate privacy concerns to be a key attribute of a good sysadmin. When I asked him about this he commented on how routine follow up background checks as part of his current position (which was for a branch of the government) had made those privacy settings a farce to him. They can see the data anyway, so the only person he was fooling was himself.
This is a common misconception about EEOC regulation. There is no such thing as a "question that employers cannot ask during interviews." (Erm, I guess you are not allowed to ask about disabilities...so one exception.) An interviewer can ask whatever they want. Seriously.
The only catch is that if they ask something about your race, sex, religion, or national origin, they can't use your answer as a reason to hire/not hire you. So there's really no point in asking the question. But it's not illegal--of itself--to ask the question. It's just pointless and stupid (and risks alienating an otherwise good job candidate, and possibly opening yourself to litigation if the candidate thinks his/her answer was the basis for not getting the job).
Since I'm going to get a "Citation Needed" tag, here you go: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/01/10/is-that-interview-question-legal
I've had one interview where they asked me for access to my private profile.
I politely asked why, since I have my profile set to private for a reason (it's for family communication only really).
Their response was that they wanted to see if I had posted anything negative about my former employer. I said, no that would be silly, it was prohibited by the NDA. They let it drop at that.
-nB
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The right to work is mis-envisioned. Most people who think they have a right to work don't realize that it translates to a requirement to employ liabilities and lose one's business. The bigger issue, though, is that most people see the having of a job as the only means by which they can subsist, and so they consider it an extension of the right to life.
We are entering an era of such technological ascendency that very few people must actually work in order to provide for the subsistence of the entire population. Capitalistic values do not work well in such an economic landscape. The fact that civilized governments pay landowners to NOT grow food, in an effort to protect a market, while children go to bed hungry within their own borders, demonstrates the absurdities of this disparity.
Of course...people who can't find jobs are not content to just die. They absolutely will turn to crime instead, where they will either:
a) take your wealth from you by stealing it, to your detriment, or
b) receive free food and clothing, paid by your tax dollars, in jail.
We will be providing for their subsistence one way or the other. It would be better, however, if humans could maintain a more enlightened means of solving the distribution problem.
I think that as the employer, you have the right to ask whatever questions you want.
I don't. And I think such thinking is leading down the path to where your employer has absolute control over your life. And no, not everyone is in the position where they can "just quit", especially when doing so means going to work for some other asshole who has the same ideas.
The idea that employers should be able to do all this shit just because they're the ones with the money needs to die a terrible, terrible death.
That said, I also think the potential employees need to grow a spine and stop answering to unacceptable demands.
While that would be great, the fact of the matter is, not everyone is in a position to do so. Most people place a lot of value on the ability to eat and pay rent.
The answer to, "I'd like to see your facebook profile" is, "and I'd like to be billionaire and not have to go hunting for jobs. We can't all have what we want. I'd also like to not work for someone who would wish to invade my privacy in this way, and that's a goal I can actually achieve. Thanks for your time, but I'm not interested in the job."
And then the unemployment office comes calling, and wonders why you've blown the 3rd interview you've had in the past 2 weeks.