Maryland Bans Employers From Asking For Facebook Passwords

Freddybear writes with news that yesterday Maryland passed a bill through both houses of the state legislature that would forbid employers from requiring job applicants or employees to provide access to social media accounts. The bill now awaits only the signature of governor Martin O'Malley. "The bill is the first of its kind in the country, and has shined a spotlight on the practice of employers demanding personal social media passwords from potential hires, [said Melissa Goemann of the ACLU]." Similar legislation is being developed in California, Illinois and Michigan, according to the Washington Post.

Comments

Re:Do employers really ask for your fb password?

[DarwinSurvivor]

In British Columbia, Canada there is actually a list of things an employer is NOT allowed to ask you (age, marital status, religion, sexual orientation, etc), and almost all of them can be answered by viewing your facebook account.

Re:Not a problem

[Osgeld]

"and the employer can check to see if you have a pic drinking"

and they can look at it all they want, they are not my mother and I am well beyond legal age to drink, they dont like it then they can kiss every square inch of my ass cause I would not fit in to their "sand vagina" culture anyway.

Re:What if

[swillden]

I've said it before and apparently I'll say it again. This is how the interview would go:

HR Person: "Please provide your login credentials for Facebook." Interviewee: "I don't use Facebook." HR Person: "Right. 'Refused to provide Facebook login credentials.'"

Result: Circular file.

Not for me. Here's how it would go:

HR Person: "Please provide your login credentials for Facebook."
Me: Have a nice day (as I stand to leave)
HR Person: Where are you going?
Me: To interview with better companies.

Think further.

[khasim]

Focus your Facebook account on your off-hours hobby of DJ'ing for gay Jewish inter-racial couples retreats.

Then let them explain themselves if they don't hire you. They'd have to demonstrate how your off-hours activity did NOT influence their hiring process.

After they kind of implied that your off-hours hobbies WOULD influence their hiring decision.

It's a lose-lose for them. I don't see why any company with any intelligent HR person would even broach the subject of "social media" with applicants.

Re:Think further.

[Billly Gates]

That is the problem right there.

HR has switched from finding the best talent for a position to mean discluding any and I mean any reason not to hire someone and then claim they couldn't find qualified applicants.

They are scared that if they make a bad hiring decision that it will reflect poorly on them and are obsessed with liabilities. In the great recession they got a tremendous boast of having many and sometimes hundreds of applicants to filter through for each position. Social media makes the job even easier.

Witness the case of requiring experience first? 30 years ago you left college applied for a job and it was understood that your grades and dedication proved trainable. Today, you can even be trained but it has to be percisely what the position requires in the exact same way or they are not interested.

Doing something for X long doesn't make you good at the job. Someone with the right smarts and work ethic does. HR needs to change their ways

These are dark days indeed...

[nobodyman]

...when even Facebook is saying "hey guys, this seems like you're crossing a line with people's privacy".

The "chilling effect" is what Facebook fears

[knorthern knight]

> ...when even Facebook is saying "hey guys, this
> seems like you're crossing a line with people's privacy".

Mark Z doesn't give 2 hoots about your privacy. He only cares about Facebook's bottom line. Facebook's product is personal information about you, e.g. your "Likes", sexual orientation, political leaning, and other demographic data. If employer-access to your FB account becomes widespread, then...

1) people will either leave FB in droves, or refuse to join in the first place; bad for FB

2) many people that stay will "sanitize" all their FB info, to avoid getting fired/refused when employers look in. This will pollute FB's database. This is just as bad, if not worse than people quitting.

Follow the money. This isn't about your privacy, it's about FB's bottom line.