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Senators Ask Feds To Probe Facebook Log-in Requests
thomst writes "Cnet's Michelle Meyers reports that democratic senators Richard Blumenthal and Charles Schumer have asked the Justice Department to investigate what they call a 'new disturbing trend' of prospective employers demanding job applicants to turn over user names and passwords for their social networks. 'Employers have no right to ask job applicants for their house keys or to read their diaries — why should they be able to ask them for their Facebook passwords and gain unwarranted access to a trove of private information about what we like, what messages we send to people, or who we are friends with?' asked Schumer. Last Friday, in response to complaints from employees, Facebook published a post expressing its opposition to the practice, which it said undermines both the security and the privacy of the user and the user's friends. Erin Egan, the company's chief privacy officer for policy, offered that employers who demand password information for prospective employees might just end up getting sued."
Posted from my employee's account
AccountKiller
Pah! So what happens to people like me with no social network? The can't ask me to send something I don't have.
Whereas, I am legitimately not on any social network. I wonder if they could prove otherwise for people who are.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Oh, and yes... I know they can search for you if you use your real name and have a public profile. That to me seems silly. If I were on a social network it would be under an alias and would be private so they couldn't search for me.
Yes, I know- technically aliases arn't allowed... but facebook would have no better way of knowing my real name was not Billy Bob Beerhouse then Slashdot would that my real name isn't Oswald McWeany.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A lot of my co-workers are friends on Facebook, and I've received requests from them to be friends. I politely declined, explaining that I like to keep a strict line between my work & my private life. If I was applying for a job and they did not want to respect my desire for some form of privacy, I'd probably just throw out the application. If it was during an interview, I'd probably tell them "Thanks, but no thanks" and walk out.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
HR presumably just assumes that you are either telling the truth, and must be a radical isolationist living in a mountain cabin amidst heaps of antigovernment screeds and bomb-making apparatus, or lying because your real facebook profile is nothing but pictures of you doing things that would Reflect Poorly On the Reputation Of The Company. Circular file.
Anybody who feels comfortable demanding extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about assuming that anybody who isn't as transparent as the norm probably has something to hide.
You are on slashdot.
You can friend people, have a journal, post articles and discuss crap.
You are on a social network.
I'm hearing a lot about this, but I have yet to actually find someone who will confirm that they've been asked to hand over their account information. While I agree that employers should not be asking for this information, I suspect that a lot of this noise is just noise.
I want to see people name names. List the companies that are asking for usernames and passwords.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Pah! So what happens to people like me with no social network? The can't ask me to send something I don't have.
Asking for your facebook password is the modern equivalent of asking that you turn over your "Little Black Book" or your Dayrunner (Remember those?) to the company. This goes far beyond what an upstanding company would do, but is not illegal. This is one of those areas where there is no law because you shouldn't have to legislate common sense. Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to have to make a law because common sense seems to have gone extinct.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This is a public service announcement with some food for thought regarding Facebook and similar sites.
Do not post anything on these sites that you do not want the world to know!
1. User agreements. Almost all of these sites retain ownership to what you post. They can re-sell or re-publish the material later, like Twitter, and there is no guarantee that your privacy settings will be intact.
2. Follow the money. Search engine advertising is falling because it is not targeted, but social networks are easily targeted for advertising. Your data will be sold, and if it's anonymized, there's no guarantee that the anonymization will be done so completely that it won't be easy to correlate your anonymized data to your public profiles.
3. It's easy to get to your data. If your friends let in someone who's crazy, that data will be public.
4. Security is not guaranteed. These sites can get hacked and their data published, a la Wikileaks. Even if the data isn't public, it will be for sale to people including the security firms that your future employers will want.
5. People are stupid. They think it's funny, and they re-share your stunts and exploits, and then there's the picture of you naked beer bonging on your supervisor's desk.
Think defensively and don't trust large corporations like Google and Facebook with your data.
I am not on slashdot.
Oswald McWeany is on slashdot. Oswald McWeany is just a random name taken from combining two names on a children's TV show with a "Mc" thrown in for fun. Good luck connecting my real name to Oswald.
Even my e-mail account that created the Oswald McWeany account uses a different made-up-name.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you give a prospective employer your password, you're proving that you can't be trusted. Mike Loukides said it well.
You can be fired in most jurisdictions for lying on a resume, if it's proven, so I'd be carefull with that.
Facebooks Terms of Use prevent you from providing your password to another. "You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account."
Anyone using Facebook agrees with this the same as they do any other EULA or agreement. Any potential employer who requests your password is asking you to break the legal agreement that you have with Facebook before you can work for them.
http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms?ref=pf
How about a probe in to how companies use people's credit reports for hiring decisions?
How is that OK but looking at people's facebook page NOT?
I have to return some videotapes...
I don't know about other countries, but in the US, employers may not ask about the following.
Race
Color
Sex
Religion
National origin
Birthplace
Age
Disability
Marital/family status
Let the person asking the question know that by asking for the Facebook information, they are using a back door approach to gather information they are not entitled to ask and that you object to giving that information.
Any reasonable employer would not want that legal liability.
I'd say that if they make their request in writing, and I sign it in the presence of a witness and of course get to keep a copy, I'll agree.
It'd be fun to see them break out in a cold sweat.
But let's say they agree. After all is signed, then I say "You do realize that my profile likely contains at least one piece of protected information that would be illegal for you to ask me to share, don't you?"
Heh...
I think the way I would put it is this:
"I'm going to say no to you, potential employer, and here is why you should hire me over those who applicants who comply. When people add me as a friend and grant me access to their page, they are trusting me with information. When they contact me privately, they are trusting me not to share what they say. If, in the future, I were to leave this company and a future company asked me for confidential secrets regarding your business, you would rightfully expect that I would decline to cooperate. The fact that I am risking an employment opportunity by declining to cooperate with you here shows you that I am a trustworthy person, even under duress, and other candidates who cooperate with you are not so much."
Anybody who feels comfortable demanding extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about assuming that anybody who isn't as transparent as the norm probably has something to hide.
Anybody who feels comfortable providing extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about providing strangers access to company confidential data, and should not be hired.
Pah! So what happens to people like me with no social network? The can't ask me to send something I don't have.
Whereas, I am legitimately not on any social network. I wonder if they could prove otherwise for people who are.
Potential Employer: "Er, so you are saying you're not part of any social network online whatsoever?"
You: "Yes, that is correct."
(Potential Employer quietly checks the box next to "Does not play well with others", and upon conclusion of the interview, places your resume in the "don't bother" pile)
Think they really need to "prove" anything at all? Companies that stoop to this level of valuation of a potential employee obviously have their priorities screwed up, so don't be shocked if this kind of crap actually goes on.
Social networks performing social engineering on society. Gotta love watching the brainwashing of the masses.
I may be anti-social, but I am not a nut and my reasons to avoid the plague of social networking are that
a) I don't want to waste tons of time and
b) I don't want to give _them_ all my data.
c) What is the point? Having thousands of "friends" to cover up I am anti-social?
Fortunately, I am pretty sure that here such a demand by an employer would be illegal (possibly criminal) anyways. They can have a social networking policy though, that limits what you can post about them. And you are not allowed to bad-mouth your employer in public anyways.
Side note: This is exactly why pseudonymous accounts are needed.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I know this is a joke, but this is the type of B.S. conclusion that H.R. folks are now TRAINED to jump to. There are tons of these.
The one that has been making me angry lately is: "the person sent their resume in PDF so we will throw it away since they must not know Office and thus be computer illiterate." It's the exact OPPOSITE of what you want as the person probably used PDF to be friendly to cross platforms. I had a recruiting officer give me a lecture about this while I was job hunting. I don't even own a copy of Microsoft Office.
I think H.R. procedure is akin to voodoo right now.
Fortunately this past week has seen many groups and legislators in Canada confirming that asking for Facebook passwords is illegal here. It's an invasion of privacy, what would be in American terms an "unwarranted search and seizure" by someone who not only has no warrant, but isn't even law enforcement.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I do well in interviews. Always have, and probably always will. It's the smile, the handshake and my unwillingness to bullshit.
Some businesses just want to tell you how great they are. Some people just want to tell you how great they are; how they've climbed the ladder - "You too could be a fat manager on 50k if you turn yourself into a lying slob like me!" No, not me, you're mistaken.
Other businesses just stick to the questions, one after another after another. These are the hardest. They don't care that I'm not planning to be here in five years, and can't understand me not wanting to answer the question. ("I need a job to pay the bills", was an actual answer that landed me one job. Ask me that question again after I've worked for you for a month).
The best interviews are always friendly chats.
My point? Interviews are a two-way process. They want to know about me and, this is the part some don't understand, I want to know about them.
What was your turnover last year? And the year before? (are you going to be around next year?)
Why did this vacancy become available? Why did the other person leave? (is this a shit job? Are they willing to bullshit me?)
What are the staff turnover rates? (is this whole place shit?)
Can I have your Facebook password? (never been asked, but if they want mine...)
Ask questions. Ask why. Ask it five times. And remember that bullshit stinks. It may take a while to reach your nose but it stinks all the same. Everyone knows the smell.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Really easy for you to say when you have not been on unemployment for over a year, your wife is about ready to leave you, your house is in foreclosure, repo guys are going to come take your car away, and the collection agencies you around the clock demanding you pay them back and harassing your family members.
In such a scenario is unfortunately, very typical in this economy for those who got laid off at the absolute worst time.
What are you going to do? So no sir Mr. potential boss. You can kiss my ass. My wife will gladly accept this, and my kids really didn't need to be fed anyway etc.
You will do it and not only will you bend over, but you will be happy with no lube and have a big smile on your face. Anything is better than not working right?
Employers are taking advantage of people in a bad situation and it is disgusting. I know I am an evil socialist for dare saying the government get involved, but this is where it is a good case to do so. This is not 1999 anymore where employers compete with you if have any reasonable talent. Today, they do not care and can under pay, overwork, and make unreasonable demands because their competitors are doing it and why not?
http://saveie6.com/
99.9% of the people who don't have facebook accounts consider their privacy private and want to keep it that way, and that's something some employers don't really want.
Nonconformists are not really wanted in some environments. They don't bend to peer pressure easily and hence are hard to control.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Boss: Son, what are those icons in your browser?
Employee: Thats ScriptBlock, Adblock Plus and Ghostery, sir.
Boss: Where'd you get them?
Employee: From Mozilla, sir.
Boss: What is that you've got written on wallpaper?
Employee: "Information Wants to be Free", sir.
Boss: You have "Information Wants to be Free" on your desktop wallpaper and you have ScriptBlock, Adblock Plus and Ghostery running in your browser. What's that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
Employee: No, sir.
Boss: You'd better get your head and your ass wired together, or HR will take a giant shit on you.
Employee: Yes, sir.
Boss: Now answer my question or you'll be standing tall before the man.
Employee: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of privacy, sir.
Boss: The what?
Employee: The duality of privacy. The Moglen thing, sir.
Boss: Whose side are you on, son?
Employee: Our side, sir.
Boss: Don't you love your company?
Employee: Yes, sir.
Boss: Then how about getting with the program? Why don't you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
Employee: Yes, sir.
Boss: Son, all I've ever asked of my employees is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the users, because inside every user there is a Facebook account trying to get out. It's a hardball world, son. We've gotta keep our heads until this privacy craze blows over.
Employee: Aye-aye, sir.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range